People need to stop calling sex work slavery. Many people in this world have many terrible jobs, and the problem is poverty. But if a woman chooses the sex business, she must do so without being morally motivated by wealthy men. Most sex workers in China are trafficked by their parents, unlike sex workers in the Netherlands who join the industry of their own choosing. It’s even worse in the United States. This is done with girls 2-10 years old. At least women in China look older 16. A lot of these woman come from rural china and are under triad gang control.

The pragmatic approach of rural women leaves them better off than the educated urban girls, who can also end up as mistresses. These urban women usually meet older men through regular work, and the relationship begins through genuine attraction. As they’ve maintained their ‘purity’ through not being involved in other sex work, they have a higher market value than the rural girls, and they’re more socially acceptable at high-end occasions.

As the saying goes: ‘Old oxen chew young grass.’ In all such relationships, the age gap is a depressing constant. Even the waxen former president Hu Jintao was once rumoured to have ‘a mistress younger than his daughter’. What’s more, some young Chinese women infantilise themselves, often with the aid of plastic surgery, to imitate the big-eyed heroines of Japanese cartoons. The aesthetic is popular with older men, who are aroused not just by the fragile look, but by affected sa jiao, ‘cute whining’, done in the fashion of a demanding child. In their private pictures, the girls look all of 14, while the men play alongside them in childish games or make faces at the camera.

Most of the married women also know that their husband has a mistress, but accept it as long as he gives her money. Sad and depressing state of affairs.