Prostitutes blamed for property bulge
By Wu Zhong, China Editor

HONG KONG - Prostitution is illegal in China, but the police crackdowns recently launched across the country indicate that the "world's oldest profession" is doing as well as ever. In Beijing, there are reportedly so many xiaojie (mistresses) that state media claim their numbers have driven up housing prices.

After efforts to "physically and spiritually" cleanse Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, prostitution has made a big comeback, so much so that municipal police launched a citywide "strike hard" vice crackdown in April entitled "Operation 4.11".

Coincidentally, in line with central government policy, the municipal government has also began taking measures (so far in vain) to bring down the city's skyrocketing housing prices.

The two crackdowns, one on social vices and the other on housing prices, seem unrelated. But a May 14 editorial in the Beijing Evening News, a sister publication of the Beijing Daily - the mouthpiece of the Communist Party's Beijing municipal committee - made an imaginative link between the two.

The article argued that a (downward) turning point in Beijing's property market could be achieved if prostitutes were driven out of the city. Skeptics say the article's flawed reasoning suggests that Beijing authorities are scrambling for a scapegoat for their failure to bring the property market under control.