Changhua County Councilor Chuang Sheng-han

SNA (Changhua) — Changhua is a county of contradictions. It’s Taiwan’s largest by population but doesn’t have a single department store. It’s full of farms and conservative values, and will also be home to Taiwan’s only legal red-light district if local councilors get their way.

“The sex industry exists; it exists everywhere in the world,” said Chuang Sheng-han, one of the two councilors spearheading the plan to create a sex trade zone in Changhua.

He said that legalizing what already happens underground would help to protect sex workers’ health and safety, and also bring in tax revenue for the government in central Taiwan.

“There are people who want to do it for the money,” said Chuang, a member of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). “We want to create this zone to guarantee people’s right to work.”

While Taipei became the last jurisdiction in Taiwan to outlaw prostitution in 1997, a handful of brothel owners still have licenses to operate in the country. Most sex work happens illegally, however, in massage parlors, karaoke bars, and – in rural areas of counties like Changhua – in xiaochibu, typically a two-room establishment that sells food and alcohol with female hostesses. Sex workers and their pimps also find clients via Facebook and Line.

In 2011, the central government amended the Social Order Maintenance Act to allow local governments to establish special zones to regulate the sex industry, and left it up to them to work out the details. Nine years later, Changhua county has passed a motion recommending that regulations for a sex trade area be drawn up. It won rare cross-party support last month from councilors from Taiwan’s two main parties, the DPP and the Nationalist Party (KMT).

The vote means the county government’s economic development department has to investigate and report back to the council.

Liu Yu-ping, the department’s director-general, says that any sex trade zone would need to promote the development of an area of Changhua. “If we are talking about a sex industry, then there needs to people who are willing to invest in this. The economic department won’t invest,” he said.

“The reply we will give the councilors will be along the lines of, ‘if there are people willing to invest in this we will do our best to help, assess, and facilitate,’” Liu added.

A feeling of economic stagnation in Changhua is the driving force behind the proposal. The county is dependent on farming and factories. “Changhua hasn’t developed in twenty years,” said Councilor Chen Chung-chia, as he drove along Golden Horse Street, a road with used car dealers, computer repair stores – as well as massage parlors and hair salons, where he said sex was sold.

Cities such as Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung have seen economic growth in that time, but in Changhua production of instant noodles, tires, and screws have gone to China, Chen said. Even convenience stores, ubiquitous on city streets in Taiwan, are sparse in areas of Changhua.

Chen and Chuang, the co-sponsors of the plan, say their dream is to see the development of an entertainment zone with sex and gambling, which is currently illegal. Chuang looks to Macau with its high-rollers and big profits for inspiration.

“If we just talk about a red-light zone, wealthy people won’t go,” said Chuang.

Chen, an independent councilor, wants to see sex education inside an entertainment district. “Good sex is helpful inside a marriage,” he said. “But no one is teaching people how to have sex.”

Professor Chen Mei-hua, a professor of sociology at National Sun Yat-sen University, said there were relatively few cases of sex trafficking in Taiwan, with victims mostly from Indonesia, Vietnam, and China. Most sex workers are Taiwanese women who find “the job market is really hostile to them,” she said.

“Mostly they are single mothers who need to raise their children and some are divorced,” Chen said. “Most younger and older sex workers are normally drifting between low-paid service work. Once they have an economically urgent moment, it’s not difficult for them to choose sex work because it makes sense to accompany a client for two or three hours to earn a few thousand (New Taiwan) dollars, but if they work in some other service work they are only able to earn 25,000 dollars (about US$850) per month.”

Chen, the councilor, said they wanted to create a red-light district to help sex workers and their potential clients. Sex workers wouldn’t need to pay a “protection fee” to their pimps in a legal zone, he said. “At the moment, they deal with being robbed and not being paid, which happens a lot when it is illegal.”

“All over the world the numbers of people who don’t get married are increasing but that need (for sex) is still there. Some people have illnesses, or others are divorced or widowed, but they still have children, so they can’t just go and find another person to marry. So we hope we can solve these problems,” Chen said.

Anthony Carlisle of the Taipei-based NGO Garden of Hope Foundation, which helps girls caught in the sex industry gain skills and employment, said the government should invest in jobs “to give women decent and equal work.”

“We do not think that sex should be classified as ‘work,’” he said. “It is not a career path that any young woman would consider taking unless she was forced by grooming, enticement, coercion, entrapment, extortion, economic hardship, or other environmental factors. Even though only a small minority are physically forced, we do not agree that any woman goes into prostitution ‘by choice’… For example, we know of cases of women who have borrowed money from loan sharks, found themselves falling behind on the high interest rates, and have then been enticed into prostitution as a way to get themselves out of debt,” Carlisle said.

Chen and Chuang say that they will continue to push for a red-light zone even though many obstacles remain, not least finding companies willing to invest, and the conservative public opinion in Changhua.

“I think because Taiwan now has same-sex marriage, there are a lot of issues that we can now talk about that we couldn’t before,” said Chuang.

“And I think Taiwanese are now more likely to accept all kinds of ideas, or at least not default to extreme protest,” he added.

Changhua’s Golden Horse Road, where many massage parlors and salons also sell sex, according to councilors

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