{"id":8834,"date":"2011-05-13T05:05:27","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T05:05:27","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-10-15T13:40:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T13:40:10","slug":"taiwan-set-to-lift-20-year-sex-trade-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=8834","title":{"rendered":"Taiwan set to lift 20-year sex trade ban"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Sex may soon be for sale legally again in Taiwan.<\/strong> The government is likely to end a 20-year-old ban that penalizes prostitutes, but not their clients, by the end of the year.<\/p>\n<p>The world&#8217;s oldest profession will still come with some strict rules, however. It will be restricted to red-light districts, away from residential and religious zones. Brothels and sex workers will be required to apply for licenses and prostitutes will have to undergo periodic health checks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The interior ministry is putting the final touches to a draft Bill<\/strong> that will be unveiled next week and submitted to the Executive Yuan, or Cabinet, in mid-May.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We cannot allow the sex trade to pervade the city,&#8221; said Liu Wen-shih, counselor and executive secretary of the ministry&#8217;s legal affairs committee, which is drawing up the Bill.<\/p>\n<p>Still, supporters of the trade want more. They argue that such rules continue to stigmatize the trade and encourage a thriving underground sex industry that numbers as many as 100,000 workers by some estimates.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;As many as 80 per cent of sex workers are forced to ply their trade under the guise of masseuses, bar hostesses and so on,&#8221; <\/strong>said Wang Fang-ping, secretary-general of Coswas, short for Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sexual transactions are just a form of commercial transaction and should be seen as a normal industry.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Prostitution was banned in 1991 under the Social Order Maintenance Act. Under Article 80 on &#8220;penalties for damaging benign social mores&#8221;, any individual who engages in sexual conduct or cohabitation for financial gain can be detained not more than three days, or fined not more than NT$30,000 (US$1,033).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/globalnation.inquirer.net\/news\/breakingnews\/view\/20110513-336301\/Taiwan-set-to-lift-20-year-sex-trade-ban\">Source<\/a><br \/>\n<!--break--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sex may soon be for sale legally again in Taiwan. The government is likely to end a 20-year-old ban that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2111,1008],"tags":[2117],"class_list":["post-8834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-sex-and-health","category-sex-in-the-city","tag-sex-in-the-city"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"2","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"Sex may soon be for sale legally again in Taiwan. The government is likely to end a 20-year-old ban that","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["News","Sex &amp; Health","Sex In The City"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":174,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":2,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1"},"magazine_blocks_comment":2,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"<a href=\"#\" class=\"category-link category-link-1\">News<\/a> <a href=\"#\" class=\"category-link category-link-2111\">Sex &amp; Health<\/a> <a href=\"#\" class=\"category-link category-link-1008\">Sex In The City<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}