Beijing Bans Public Smoking
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:29 PM

The ban applies to public buildings, but not to bars and restaurants -- those establishments must have no-smoking sections, however. There are apparently 100,000 current government employees who will be enlisted as enforcers, according to this BBC report, which also provides an interesting factoid: "For every three cigarettes lit worldwide, one is smoked in China." (I just lighted three cigarettes -- how does China know to have someone take a smoke?)

Vice Squad, indolent of late, is taking to the road for a couple of months. For the next week or so, blogging will be minimal, I fear. Perhaps I will light three more cigarettes to deal with my apprehension.

Labels: China, smoking ban, tobacco

 
Laotian Trade Balance Suffers
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:29 PM

From an article in today's New York Times:

The amount of land cultivated in Laos for opium has fallen 94 percent since 1998. The country now produces so little opium that it may now be a net importer of the drug, the United Nations says.

But there's probably no reason to call for import tariffs -- it looks as if Laos just doesn't possess a comparative advantage (relative to Afghanistan) in poppy production, for agricultural reasons:

This shift to Afghanistan has had major consequences for the global heroin market: a near doubling of opium production worldwide in less than two decades. Poppies grown in the fertile valleys of southern Afghanistan yield on average four times more opium than those grown in upland Southeast Asia.

So the shift to Afghan opium seems to comport with economic efficiency.

I am of mixed mind about the article, incidentally. It has some interesting reporting, but it never notes how worldwide opium prohibition -- the completely unnecessary worldwide opium prohibition, I might add (but would not expect the article to) -- converts the growing of poppies into a Big Issue, and renders opium use almost as problematic as the prohibitionists claim it is. The article is accompanied by a worthwhile photo of Chinese "inmates" at a drug rehab center: the pictured scene doesn't give me much faith in the medical underpinnings of the "treatment" that the inmates are receiving.

Labels: Afghanistan, China, opium

 
Macau
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:35 PM

Labels: China, gambling, Las Vegas, slot machine

 
China's Drug War Cruelty
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:48 AM

The absurd punishments for the consensual drug-related 'crimes' in the US are disheartening, but some countries are even worse -- I suppose the States can take some comfort there? China is one of the most egregious offenders. Right now, seven Ugandans have been sentenced to death for heroin trafficking in China. They were convicted of trafficking in more than 50 grams -- that's nearly two ounces, folks, and might be enough to keep a single addict supplied with heroin for a whole month. (If they were convicted of trafficking of less than 50 grams, they would have been eligible "only" for 15 years in prison.) The Ugandan government is pleading for clemency from the Chinese, but at the same time, doesn't want anyone to think that Uganda isn't committed to the well-designed global drug war policy. The story can be found here.

Labels: China, heroin, sentencing

 
Vicewire, 5/31/2005
- posted by Ryan @ 7:28 PM

1) Here is a different type of "rehab" for drug and alcohol abuse: doing time in the pew rather than in jail.

2) A story about the inability of convicted prostitutes to teach in Oregon.

3) Reminiscent of the Opium Wars 150 years ago, China has put out an appeal to the public to help stop narcotics trafficking and abuse.

4) In other Oregonian news, the recent rejection of an off-reservation Indian Casino has some wondering if this of less off-reservation casinos trend is gaining momentum: "There are many members of Congress who are ... deeply concerned about the proliferation of off-reservation Indian gambling casinos" - Rep. David Wu, D-Ore.

Labels: China, drugs, Native Americans, prostitution, treatment

 
Macao Gambling Monopoly Threatened?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:31 PM

Just last week Vice Squad mentioned that Macao was the only part of China that permitted casinos. Now The Standard ("China's Business Newspaper") suggests that Chinese authorities might be thinking about expanding legal casinos to other parts of the country. The evidence for that view, however, is not exactly overwhelming. It seems to be primarily based on the notions that the government could use the money, illegal gambling happens anyway, and Peking University is co-hosting a conference about gambling.

Thanks to Harry Hutton, impresario of Chase Me Ladies, I'm in the Cavalry, for the pointer. Harry sort of lives in Hong Kong, when he isn't visiting Mars or Alpha Centauri or some such. Harry's take on Macao? "It's like Las Vegas but without all the good taste and understatement."

Labels: China, gambling

 
Gambling Competition In, and From, Macao
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:23 PM

Casino gambling is illegal in China except on the island of Macao, which followed Hong Kong into the mainland fold in 1999. For 40 years, one man held the gambling monopoly in Macao, but the Chinese ended that exclusivity last year. As a result, the casino industry on Macao has been growing at an impressive clip, and threatens next year to bring in more gambling revenue than the Las Vegas strip. This article in the Financial Times provides the details.

Labels: China, gambling

 
Make Money From Your Knowledge of Internet Porn
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:37 PM

Chinese police must be the only people in the world who have trouble locating pornography on the internet. They are offering rewards for people who can point them to offending web sites. Hmmm, not sure I trust this; would-be informants might want to remember the outcome of the Hundred Flowers campaign. How come you know so much about internet porn, anyway, comrade?

Vice Squad noted earlier the intention of the Chinese government to eliminate wrong-thinking websites by October 1. I haven't heard their declaration of victory as of yet, but I am confident there will be one.

Labels: China, internet, pornography

 
Commercial Sex in China
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:34 AM

I just ran across a blog, andrésgentry :: water, that provides this remarkable, wide-ranging post exploring commercial sex in China. The author, Andrés Gentry, starts by recounting his efforts to survey the number of sex establishments in Zhangjiagang City, Yangshe Town, where he was living this spring:

Taking the survey was pretty depressing. A number of times, especially near the long-distance bus station where the streets are very narrow and the alley walls are about 10 feet from each other, the women would leave their workplaces and attempt to physically drag me back in with them. There was no way to avoid them when they impeded my path. I felt their nails through the sweatshirt I wore and had to shake their hands off with my elbow as I trudged on. The desperation of clinging to a stranger's elbow in the hope of selling your body should give pause to almost anyone looking at the sex industry.

On any number of occasions I also saw policemen walking their beats in Yangshe's red light districts: a journalist could write a very interesting story figuring out whether these police are paid off, owners of some of the establishments, and/or involved in getting and keeping women in prostitution. It would also be quite interesting finding out who the women's patrons are: I would guess mainly CCP cadres and businessmen. While foreigners are often accused of introducing spiritual pollution to China, in Yangshe Town that is quite impossible: there are almost no foreigners there and of the four red light districts only that one near the Walking Street would see any foreigners.

Such a short snippet, however, cannot do justice to the mass of information and multitude of insights in the original post. It is well worth a visit -- as is the dialogue in the comments section concerning some of the quantitative estimates in the post.

Labels: China, prostitution

 
Chinese Penalties for Web Porn Purveyors
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:15 PM

Tyler Cohen at Marginal Revolution points us to this story about potential life sentences in prison for people in China convicted of distributing pornography over the web. In the US, porn production probably wouldn't lead to anything longer than a 50 year sentence.

Labels: China, internet, pornography, sentencing

 
Vicewire, 829/2004
- posted by Ryan @ 9:06 PM

1) 19 workers for the British government have been fired for viewing pornography at work, and another 200 have been sternly reprimanded. London paper The Sun reported the charges and brought to the reader's attention that one scurrilous employee viewed over 103,000 "hardcore" images.

2) A student was taken out of school for wearing a shirt that said "Hempstead, NY". Unfortunately for our poor law enforcement officers, it was the name of his former town in, yes, New York, rather than an attempt to gratify the use of weed.

3) Here's a story about searching for a drug to cure cocaine and other drug addictions that may already have some other use.

4) In a real surprise, apparently the head of the Haitian national police was involved in drug smuggling.

5) Drunken driving deaths declined in 2003 by 3 percent, the first decline since 1999.

6) And finally, China has launched a national campaign against drugs in the entertainment sector.

Labels: alcohol, Britain, China, driving, hemp, pornography, Vicewire

 
China Making the Internet Safe for Children
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:12 PM

Chinese government officials have discovered to their horror that pornographic images are available on the internet. They intend to fully cleanse the web by their National Day, October 1. Besides the requisite hundreds of arrests, measures taken so far have been to close 16,000 internet cafes and to stop issuing licenses for new cafes. Hail to the visionary leadership of the People's Republic of China! Thanks to them, China now has a glorious future...and it always will.

Labels: arrests, China, internet, policing, pornography

 
The Myriad Uses of Vice Crimes
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:03 PM

In particular, their frequently "victimless" status gives them a real advantage in setting up folks who are troubling to the powers that be. Make possession of a plant a crime, and it becomes relatively easy for that troublesome person to suddenly possess the prohibited plant.

In an unrelated story, Hong Kong democracy advocate Ho Wai-to was recently arrested in mainland China for soliciting a prostitute. The wheels of justice turn quickly in some venues, and voila', Ho was found guilty and sentenced to serve six months -- despite his candidacy in legislative elections scheduled for next month. Sure, most people convicted of such a "crime" in China are only fined, but no doubt there were extenuating circumstances in this case. And certainly his wife's charges are absurd. Could anyone believe for a minute her claim, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, that "Chinese authorities brought a prostitute to Ho's hotel room in Guangdong's Dongguan region, beat him and denied him food and water until he signed a confession"?

Labels: China, police brutality, policing, prostitution

 
Kicking off Vicewire, 6/27/2004
- posted by Ryan @ 10:50 PM

Hi. If the regular bloggers are like a true police "vice squad", then I'm like someone who answers the phones when I can. Or if the analogy works better, like Janine from Ghostbusters. Anyway, here's some recent vice happenings:

1) In a gruesome story, China marked International Anti-Drug Day by proscribing 16 drug traffickers with death sentences and killing another man.

2) A giant 50-year study on the effects of smoking finished last week, and noted the number of years of life saved by stopping smoking at certain ages. The average is about 10 years lost by smoking.

3) Who'd a thunk it? Self-extinguishing cigarettes. Useful if you "fall asleep" while smoking.

4) And to go with it, the Czechs are kindly providing marijuana-flavored alcoholic drinks, with 16% alcohol no less.

5) Finally, a casino owner attempted to recreate the famous C.M. Coolidge painting of dogs playing poker to spark interest in a new gaming pit. So it's not really newsworthy, but it's an interesting publicity stunt to try and get people in the casino.

Labels: alcohol, China, drugs, gambling, marijuana, smoking, Vicewire

 
215 Restaurants Closed for Putting Opium into Soups, Stews
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:38 PM

It happened in southwestern China. 215? Sounds like opium was required for a restaurant to remain competitive.

Simultaneously, in another example of amazing statistical accuracy in the war on drugs, the Chinese version of the DEA announced that the area under cultivation of opium poppies in the "Golden Triangle" of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos is down 43%, to 73,300 hectares. No word yet as to whether the opium shortage has been a boon for purveyors of marijuana (or broccoli cheese) soups.

Labels: China, opium

 
Panda Cigarette Craze
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:00 PM

What do you get when you cross one of those cuddly bear-like (but raccoon-related) bamboo-eating cuties with a highly addictive drug? A Panda cigarette craze, of course. The cigarettes are made in China, where the Panda brand was famously favored by Deng Xiaoping. Oddly, in the former workers' paradise [It's still officially a workers' paradise -- ed.], the Panda brand was ONLY available to Deng and a a handful of high-ranking officials: the production run was but hundreds of packs per year. Creeping capitalism now has extended the availability of Pandas to the lumpen, er, the hoi polloi. Typical cigarettes manufactured in China cost some 20 cents per pack, whereas Pandas go for....almost $10 per pack. And even at those prices, folks are lining up overnight to purchase them.

This information comes from an article by James T. Areddy that appeared on the front page of yesterday's Wall Street Journal. Here's an excerpt:

"Few Panda buyers smoke the cigarettes they acquire. They prefer to give them to friends or to superiors and officials whom they wish to influence or thank. One Shanghai internist says he regularly receives gifts of Panda cigarettes from grateful patients, even though he is a nonsmoker." The cigarettes are so valuable, maybe ne'er-do-wells will try to pawn off some fake Pandas to you, no? Not to worry: current Pandas "feature six anticounterfeiting measures, including a logo that appears on the filter when the cigarette is lit and colors on the box that change under infrared light."

Labels: China, tobacco

 
Singapore Defends Itself Against Amnesty International Charges
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:24 PM

Yesterday Vice Squad noted Amnesty International's report on executions in Singapore, the majority of which are carried out for drug-crime convictions. (Vice Squad failed to link to the actual AI report, however, an oversight that is remedied here.) Friend of Vice Squad Pak Shun Ng brings our attention to this article in Straits Times Interactive (registration required), noting that the Singapore government is defending its actions. A government spokesperson denied that the justice system in Singapore is shrouded in secrecy, and more generally, suggested that safeguards for defendants met international norms. Further, the spokesperson is quoted in the linked article pointing to the benefits of the Singaporean policy: 'Most Singaporeans know that our tough but fair system of criminal justice makes Singapore one of the safest places in the world to live and to work in.'

Singapore is not the only country that executes drug traffickers. Indeed, other Asian nations are said to be increasing their use of the death penalty. China leads the world in the absolute number of executions; from the Taipei Times: "In one particular death frenzy, Amnesty said at least 150 accused drug criminals were executed across China in June, 2002 to mark the UN' International Drugs Day."

Labels: Asia, China, drugs, Singapore

 
Moscow Does Not Believe in Vice Policy Blogs
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:26 PM

Vice Squad is in Moscow for a conference -- alas, not a vice policy conference. Poor internet access and conference activities have precluded blog updates. For now, can only note from Thursday's Guardian that the two main defendants in the trials in Southern China concerning the Japanese sex tourism have been give life sentences for their roles in organizing the affair. (See Vice Squad, December 14, 2003). That's the last time that they will ever pandar, I suppose.

Blogging will continue to be sporadic, I am sorry to forecast, for the next few weeks.

Labels: China, prostitution, solipsism

 
Update on Chinese Prostitution Trial
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:29 AM

Today's Observer has the latest on the trial in southern China
stemming from the alleged Japanese businessmen's two-day
orgy in September. (Here's Vice Squad's previous post on the trial.)

The Observer article provides more information about the defendants:
"Twelve Chinese 'mamis' - female pimps - are facing up to 10 years in
prison if found guilty of organising prostitution. The women, whose trial
opened on Friday, are accused of running a two-day mass orgy involving
the men ["288 male construction company workers"] and 500 prostitutes
at a five-star hotel in Zhuhai in Guangdong province in September."

The trial ended on Saturday but the verdict was delayed. So far, none of
the Japanese workers has been indicted, though that might change.

The trial has upset vice business as usual in Zhuhai: "The orgy scandal
was followed by a police crackdown on bars and prostitution. Taiwanese
and Japanese tourists are staying away. Karaoke bars must close at
11.30pm, two and a half hours earlier than usual, and dancing till dawn
is off the tourist itinerary. Massage parlours are allowed to continue
operating, on condition they close all of their VIP rooms."

Labels: Asia, China, prostitution

 
Prostitution Trial in China
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:23 PM

Friend of Vice Squad Dr. Christopher Young, living in British exile,
draws our attention to the trial of 14 Chinese accused of various
prostitution-related offenses stemming from a weekend orgy
involving Japanese tourists last September. (Here's a People's
Daily article from about the time the orgy story originally broke.)
The presumptive sex tour involved some 400 Japanese tourists and
500 Chinese prostitutes; it sparked a good deal of outrage in China,
some no doubt because of the scale of the event and the fact that
the male participants were Japanese, exacerbated by the timing
falling near the 72nd anniversary of the Japanese occupation of
northeast China. (Dr. Young suspects that there would have been
plenty of outrage even if the timing would have been less historically
charged.)

The defendants face up to ten years in prison, and I find it hard
to expect leniency or acquittal in this case. The wheels of Chinese
justice roll quickly -- the trial started Friday and verdicts are
expected Saturday.

The first of the linked articles above contains this interesting
characterization: "Prostitution is technically illegal in China but has
become rife in the past two decades after economic reforms brought
prosperity to the once impoverished country." Not sure about the
implied causality there -- does prosperity cause prostitution? But
my skepticism should not be taken as an endorsement of the
opposite causal claim, that prostitution brings prosperity.

Labels: China, Prohibition, prostitution