Sex and the single man

Chinese businessman Xu Guangshi is casually strolling through his factory in southern China. Gesturing towards his employees, he comments “China is still rather prudish. But we are doing outstanding business with our sex toys.”

The workers are sitting at rows of tables and, piece by piece, are assembling Xu's hottest-selling product: life-sized inflatable plastic female dolls.

Millions of men in China cannot find a female partner and sociologist Lin Yinhe of the Academy of Social Sciences explains why.

“It’s a society in which men are more highly valued than women,” she says. Families want a male to carry on the line, and so female foetuses are often aborted – even though this is not officially permitted.

China’s one-child-policy and inexpensive ultrasonic scanning technology are making matters worse. The Family Planning Commission in Beijing fears that by the year 2020, there will be 30 million men in the 20-to-45 year age group who will be without female partners.

Already, the authorities are doing battle with human smuggling rings trying to sell young women to the lonely men, while women from neighbouring countries are coming to China in the search for single – and wealthy – men. So there’s a paradox: in conservative China of all places, where the government imposes draconic punishments against pornography and prostitution, the one-child policy and the rising surplus of men is playing right into the hands of the sex-toy industry.

“These men without wives or girlfriends also have their needs” says the 31-year-old factory boss. “And that's exactly where we come in.” Each month, his Jumei Toys Factory produces up to 10,000 sex dolls. The cheapest costs 120 yuan (Bt625).

In a side room in the factory, workers are producing the heads. Xu takes one from a box to inspect it.

“Some men want light skin, others prefer something darker. We can make anything possible, but it costs extra,” he says. For those who like a fuller-figured body, the price tag goes up to 160 yuan.

Asked why China’s strict government is giving sex toy manufacturers, of all people, so much freedom, Xu thinks the answer is obvious: “No child can result from sex with a doll. Nor are there any sexually transmitted diseases.”

As such, his products are also helping the one-child policy.

It's no coincidence that stores in China's downtown centres selling sex toys are located directly next to stores selling birth control items. The sex toys are often regarded by officials as being a birth-control product. At the same time, a more open attitude toward sexual issues is now spreading in China.

“There are also women who buy a sex doll for their husbands,” Xu points out. For example, pregnant women will give such dolls to their husbands for the final period ahead of the expected delivery date.

“Hardly anybody would have dared doing something like this just a few years ago,” Xu says.

In China, sex shops are called “Stores for Adult Needs” and are now firmly established in the urban landscape. Even in such major cities as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the next “adult store” is never far away.

For the moment, Xu is selling most of his sex doll products in Asia, but he aims to start exporting more to Europe. Industry experts say he would be right in line with the trends, as worldwide the largest share of sex toys comes from China.

The breakthrough may be made possible by technical innovation – in the form of 3-D printers.

“Thanks to this technology we can in theory almost exactly replicate any body,” Xu says with enthusiasm.

It doesn't matter if a man wants an exact copy of his wife, or say, designs a body according to his own fantasies at the computer.

And Xu has an idea about how to win female customers: “If David Beckham would give his permission, then we would also manufacture thousands of Beckham dolls.”