This book is a study of regulated prostitution in China and its relationship to local statebuilding during the first half of the twentieth century. Following the lead of European states and Japan at the turn of the twentieth century, cities around China began to register, tax, monitor, and sometimes give venereal disease inspections to prostitutes. In spite of constant political attacks and resistance from many quarters, this local approach to dealing with prostitution continued throughout the period 1906-1937, even as it took different forms in different cities. Prostitution at that time was ... More

This book is a study of regulated prostitution in China and its relationship to local statebuilding during the first half of the twentieth century. Following the lead of European states and Japan at the turn of the twentieth century, cities around China began to register, tax, monitor, and sometimes give venereal disease inspections to prostitutes. In spite of constant political attacks and resistance from many quarters, this local approach to dealing with prostitution continued throughout the period 1906-1937, even as it took different forms in different cities. Prostitution at that time was an integral part of the system of gender relations, one of only a few fates available to women and girls besides wife/mother/concubine, servant, or factory worker. State intervention in the form of regulating prostitution was an important connection among the local state, politics, and gender relations. This book examines how the means that local government chose to shape this institution so integral to, and constitutive of, the system of gender relations ended up transforming local states themselves. This tells us that gender needs to be written into the story of statebuilding in China, even though women, generally barred from political life at that time in China, were not visible political actors.