One in Four Taiwanese Men Visited Adult Businesses in 2014

TAIWAN—If results of a survey released Wednesday by Taiwan's Centers for Disease Control are accurate, the adult entertainment industry in Taiwan is experiencing a serious boom in business. The survey of over 1,000 males indicates that "as many as 2.33 million local men visited adult entertainment establishments over the course of this year, with an estimated 470,000 paying for sex," according to Want China Times. While that number may not sound terribly huge to American ears, the Times notes that the sovereign island's population of 23 million people "suggests around one in four men in the country has visited such an establishment in the past year." Other results from the survey—which "asked participants if they had visited establishments associated with the sex trade in Taiwan, including saunas, hostess clubs, and certain tea shops, and whether they had paid for sex with male or female professionals from escort or 'compensated dating' services"—were equally interesting. For instance, the survey, which was undertaken to gain information about sexual practices of men over the age of 20 in order to improve HIV prevention strategies, also indicated that only 70 percent of the men who admitted to paying for sex said they had used protection. According to the deputy director-general of Taiwan's CDC, Chuang Jen-hsiang, the survey results show that there has been a large increase in the number of men who said they paid for sex in the past 12 years. While the current data derived from this survey is restricted to local males, as AVN has previously reported, Taiwan's far more liberal culture has also long served as a sort of sexual release-valve for patrons of the erotic arts living on the far more restrictive Communist mainland.