China

Sex work in China is criminalised under a dual-track regime. Administratively, the Public Security Administration Punishments Law (PSAPL) authorises police to detain sellers and buyers for 10–15 days plus fines up to RMB 5,000; the revised PSAPL passed in 2025 maintains this. Criminally, Articles 358–360 of the Criminal Law cover the third-party chain: Art 358 punishes organising or forcing prostitution with 5–10 years, escalating to 10 years-to-life plus fines or asset confiscation; Art 359 punishes luring, sheltering or procuring with up to 5 years (minimum 5 years if a girl under 14 is involved); Art 360 punishes anyone knowingly engaging in sex work while carrying serious STIs with up to 5 years. Art 361 explicitly criminalises hotel, catering, entertainment and taxi employees who facilitate sex work via their employer. The "Custody and Education" extrajudicial detention system was abolished by the NPC Standing Committee on 28 December 2019, but this was procedural reform, not decriminalisation. The February 2014 Dongguan "Sin City" crackdown — 6,700 police, ~2,000 venues raided — set the post-2014 template, and Xi-era online governance has since expanded it.

Dongguan was historically the centre of the industry, with an estimated 300,000 workers pre-2014; the February 2014 raids wiped out roughly RMB 50 billion in spending. Shanghai and Beijing now run on a fragmented model: high-end work via KTV "hostess" venues, mid-tier through hair-salon/foot-massage fronts, and a large online tier coordinated through encrypted apps and disposable WeChat IDs. Post-2014 the industry is overwhelmingly indoor and digitally coordinated. COVID-era lockdowns (2020–2022) destroyed much of the venue economy; the rebuild since 2023 has been smaller, more atomised. Periodic "Strike Hard" and "Anti-Pornography" sweeps continue with arrest quotas, meaning enforcement spikes are unpredictable.

China operates one of the most aggressive digital-identity regimes in the world. The Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL, in force 1 November 2021) governs platform data on paper, but in practice the Cybersecurity Law's real-name verification regime — strengthened by the Ministry of Public Security's national "Web ID" (国家网络身份认证) system that took effect July 2025 — links every WeChat, Weibo, Alipay, and SIM card to a state-issued ID. December 2025 revisions to PSAPL now allow 10–15 days' detention plus higher fines for private sharing of "obscene" material. VPNs are technically illegal under the 2017 Cybersecurity Law, intermittently tolerated but increasingly disrupted. Assume any Chinese-platform account, payment trail, or domestic phone number is fully visible to public security.

Foreigners caught selling or buying sex are detained, processed for prostitution offences, then deported under the Exit-Entry Administration Law; future visa applications are effectively blocked. Mandatory hotel registration (every guest's passport uploaded to police systems on check-in) means your location is known in real time. There is no embassy intervention available for prostitution-related detention. Do not travel to China to work, full stop.

None operate openly. Mainland platforms all run real-name verification and aggressive obscenity filters and will report posters to police. Off-shore platforms (Telegram, Twitter/X, OnlyFans) are blocked behind the Great Firewall and require VPN access. There is no equivalent of Tryst that is safe to use from inside mainland China.

• Asia Catalyst — regional (left mainland after 2017 Foreign NGO Law)
• ICRSE — International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe
• NSWP — Global Network of Sex Work Projects