Peter S. Goodman on China's sex trade:

an increasingly significant channel for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, according to health officials. Since 1995, cases of gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia have increased more than 30 percent annually, according to government data. Experts say those numbers are surely low given that most patients seek treatment in private clinics that do not report data to central authorities. More than 120 million Chinese are already infected with hepatitis B, and at least 1 million have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to the government.
In some countries -- notably Thailand and the Netherlands -- governments have acknowledged the scope of their local sex trade and targeted prostitutes with programs to encourage condom use to prevent the spread of infections. Not in China. Local governments are enmeshed in prostitution through their ownership of hotels that draw customers and profit from the trade, but for the Communist Party, whose legitimacy rests in part on having supposedly eradicated such social vices, the thriving industry is deeply embarrassing. That has stymied efforts to regulate it and limit its harm.

And it's a big money maker

Four years ago in Shenyang -- an industrial city in China's northeast -- the mayor, Mu Suixin, urged the opening of bars and massage parlors as an antidote to unemployment.
He gave prostitutes licenses and applied 30 percent taxes to their earnings. The resulting windfall encouraged other cities to follow suit.

One woman

tells her parents she is a waitress.
"In China, daughters are not very important," she said. "It's the son that matters. Unless I leave and find work, there's no way that my little brother can continue his education."

Another woman's family is in debt. She knows

what the job description of a hostess usually means. Here, she could at least be sure she would not run into anyone she knew from home and suffer the disgrace of being discovered by her parents. "If they knew, they would throw me out of the family," she said.

And who says filial piety is dead?

Update
And there's this, about how young teenagers are kidnapped and forced into prositution. (link via rice cooker)