Chinese chastity belt sparks controversy

Asian Economic News, Jan 15, 2001

BEIJING, Jan. 12 Kyodo

A young Chinese inventor hopes his patent-pending chastity belt will help keep couples together and put prostitutes out of work at a time when new-found affluence and freedom tempts many.

Zhao Xin, from northern China's Liaoning Province, says he ''cherished the idea'' of designing China's first effective ''loyalty nickers'' ever since infidelity destroyed his parents' once-harmonious relationship, an article in this week's Beijing Review quotes him as saying.

Driven to ''prevent such objectionable behavior,'' Zhao experimented with sturdy cloth fitted with straps and a coded lock to develop underclothing that would ''protect the innocent party from suffering caused by the betrayal of his spouse,'' the publication said.

But the device has sparked controversy among Chinese sociologists, officials and cultural critics, many of whom say no good can come of it.

''Loyalty nickers are only an embodiment of certain feudal thoughts'' and are very likely to be abused by the party with the upper hand in a relationship, says Cai Fanghua, a columnist at the Beijing Youth Daily. They will only further the trend of wealthy men taking multiple concubines with impunity, the Beijing Review quoted him as saying.

Extramarital affairs have been around for ages, pointed out sociologist Zhou Xiaozheng of People's University, and so ''it is absurd to place hopes of preventing their occurrence on a product.''

The ''nickers'' will merely prompt those they are used on to find ways to contravene the intended purpose, ''like getting the Internet and then encountering hackers,'' he said.

Even its use on convicted prostitutes would be an ''infringement of human rights,'' warns Li Yinhe of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Meanwhile, intellectual property rights specialist Liu Chuntian says there is no good reason to hold up the approval of the invention's patent, or its ultimate production and distribution, ''with vain moralizing.''

''We should not combine moral or value judgments with technical standards,'' he exhorts readers of the Beijing Review. ''It has nothing to do with morality. Since a kitchen knife can be used to kill, should we ban production of it?''