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Eric counts out the Chinese numbers

The realities of trade

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Tuesday, 2 September 2008

Everywhere I go at the moment it's all China this and China that. If it’s not an earthquake, then it’s the Olympics or their economic might.

I’ve been in Birmingham ear-wigging at a conference of the International Union of Sex Workers, listening in to some good old-fashioned working prostitutes talking about the law, lobbying and their competitors. They were moaning about the "new girls in town" - the Chinese sex workers. One lady in her late fifties was moaning about how young they all looked, even women her own age, and how this made her fume. Another said how she was constantly undercut by the Chinese "who'll do anything for less" and a third complained about how those young Chinese sex workers "come over here and take the cocks out of the mouths of my girls."

My smile covered up my discomfort but also acknowledged the realities of this trade. All three women were Eastern European and had come to the UK as sex workers a few years ago, displacing the previous wave of sex workers who had come here before them. Now it's the turn of the Chinese. We all know about the people-smuggled cockle pickers and illegal workers but the girls brought over here, lured with the promise of work and then forced to work as sex workers, get hardly any publicity at all. No one cares. They live trapped, wretched lives, virtual prisoners to their pimps, helpless and unable to even ask for help as they are kept from learning English or being allowed to integrate themselves.

This is happening in towns and cites all over the UK and Europe. With rising HIV infections in China being transmitted via sex workers and their clients - everyone in the prostitution trade needs to be vigilant. World health experts estimated that only five percent of HIV cases in China are reported. Although this number represents only a small percentage of China’s vast 1.2 billion population the sheer numbers of people at risk is staggering.

China is not only going to economically dominate us in the years to come, but it will soon start to dominate the worlds of sexual health and HIV. The numbers are staggering and treatment, research and innovation follows the cash.

We need to welcome and embrace the new wave of Chinese people entering all areas of our lives, from bank clerks, to hairdressers, from traffic wardens to hookers but the last thing we want to do is to upset them, because if they all choose to jump up and down at the same time then we’ll all get what we deserve.