“feudal relics of capitalism,” and “a blot on the newly awakened Chinese people.” The Chinese people themselves were depicted, just then, as at their busiest, daily rising up and advancing and wiping out, to the right and left, social injustices of every kind. Unlike other “blots on the Chinese people,” often wiped out very thoroughly indeed, the prostitutes, considered the innocent victims of a corrupted society, were to be re-educated and placed back in the ranks of productive labor. In any country, I suppose, the restoration of fallen women is something the average good citizen is likely to view with emotion, but in the grimly puritanical climate of Communist China, the government’s anti-prostitution program, inaugurated in student and worker discussion groups and brought to full bloom in gigantic youth demonstrations where the iniquities of the prostitution system were sensationally exposed to horror-stricken, even weeping boys and girls, a reforming spirit was created resembling, more often than not, mass hysteria.
