Club Crackdown: 4 Clubs Closed on Prostitution Charges

The Beijing Times (Jinghua Shibao) reports today that four Beijing “nightclubs” were raided on May 11 and shut down on suspicion of being fronts for prostitution. Most readers will be unlikely to have heard of the clubs concerned – Tianshang Renjian, Duomen Yeyan, Huadu and Kaiyu Guoji – as they’re all apparently the sort of places mainly frequented by Audi-driving chaps with man-purses seeking to splash cash on a bit of female company. According to the newspaper’s report, the four raids resulted in 557 peishi xiaojie – the girls who get paid to join customers for drinks and karaoke sessions – being picked up and questioned by police.

There seems to be no question that the clubs involved were asking for trouble – they are all well-known in Beijing as little more than high-end brothels – but there are echoes here of the recent MAO Livehouse closure. Namely, the question of “everyone knew what they were up to all along - why close them now?” And, as with MAO and many others before, the answer seems to be “because someone didn’t get paid on time.” And so life in Beijing goes on.

Click here for the full report from The Beijing Times on these recent raids.
See our report on MAO Livehouse’s closure here.