Sexy lingerie, adult costumes, inflatable dolls and much more are on display at an adult industry trade fair in the Chinese territory of Macau that shows how China’s growing influence has spread, even to the bedroom.
The fourth annual Asia Adult Expo began on Friday, with companies showing off sexy products aimed at China’s growing middle class. The adult industry is looking to tap China and Asian markets amid the downturn in the US and Europe.
Show exhibitors said many Chinese now have more open-minded views about sex, which is driving demand for their products. The expo’s organizers said they plan to launch similar fairs later this year in other parts of China, which also churns out nearly three-quarters of the world’s sex toys.
Estimates of the size of the adult industry in China are hard to come by, but the China Daily newspaper said in a report last year that China produces 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, making it the world’s biggest producer. The industry, with more than 1,000 manufacturers, is worth about US$2 billion annually, it said.
“The standard of living in China is rising and people want to upgrade their lifestyle, so the market needs these products,” Bo Chen said as he sat next to samples of his company’s main product, a lifelike and anatomically correct female sex doll made of rubbery, flesh-like material that sells for 16,000 yuan (US$2,500).
Chen owned a chemical factory in China’s Jiangsu Province, but three years ago he decided to start making sex toys because he sensed there was an opportunity.
Chen, president of Jurong Outlook Toys & Gifts Manufacturing Co, said he and several friends pooled their money to start the business.
He is hoping to meet potential customers among the 2,500 trade visitors and 30,000 members of the general public expected at the Macau fair. It was his first visit to the annual show, attended by 80 companies from 13 countries.
Chen’s case is not that unusual, said Kenny Lo (老旭華), chief executive of show organizer Vertical Expo (縱延展業). Many Chinese manufacturers realized they could tweak their product lines to make adult goods with minimal investment to reap bigger profits. It is not such a big step for underwear makers to make sexy lingerie and it is easy for companies making regular toys to switch to sex toys, he said.
The US and Europe have traditionally been the biggest markets for the adult industry, but slumping economies there are curtailing growth, while competition and low profit margins are also making life hard for companies, Lo said.
In Asia, the market is much less developed so “there is much potential for growth,” Lo said. Adult product manufacturers have told him that in the US and Europe, “it’s a very tough time right now, but in mainland China and Asia, it’s good.”
Lo said demand from suppliers has prompted his Hong Kong-based company to start branching out with new fairs in other parts of China, starting with a show in October in Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong. It will be followed by shows in Fuzhou on China’s eastern coast and Qingdao further up the coast. It’s also eyeing shows in Taiwan and Singapore.
Other emerging markets are also sources of growth. Renata Bertacini came all the way from Sao Paulo, Brazil, to source items for her boutique and online shop Mimosexy.
“I came to find new products to take to Brazil, new things to import from China,” she said.
Many of the products were items she already stocks; but at half the price that her middlemen back home charge, she can save money by buying them directly.
At the expo, vibrators of all shapes and colors, condoms, lubricants and blowup male and female dolls were on display. One company was selling coffee tables made of erotic statues.
“The mainland Chinese, they are very open to these sexual things,” Lo said. “It’s not something that’s a taboo” anymore.
It’s a sign of how rapid social changes in China are driving new businesses. Several decades ago, men and women were strictly segregated in many parts of life and most people wore drab clothing that revealed little. Nowadays, shops selling sexual aids are common in many cities and pornography, while officially banned, is commonly found on the Internet.
China’s booming economy, the world’s second biggest, is in large part driving many of those changes.
“A lot of these people have first-generation money. Before when it was old money, it was shameful to show it,” said Zach Goode, a sales manager at Electric Eel, which holds the global license to Hustler lingerie.
Now, China’s nouveau riche don’t just want BMWs and Gucci, “they want to express themselves and have sexy shoes and lingerie and have fun with it. They’re not as repressed as the last generation was,” Goode said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last