from www.wsj.com – Beijing’s war against pornography is infamous for producing an inordinate amount of collateral damage. For the most part, the casualties of the government’s efforts to crack down on porn, which is illegal in China, are non-pornographic websites that get swept up in periodic campaigns against “harmful” online content.

Despite the sledge-hammer strategy, sex scholar Katrien Jacobs [pictured] says in an interview published Tuesday by the Web magazine Danwei, China’s guardians of public morality are losing, badly:

There are several statistics that show the net-porn industries are surviving and flourishing despite the ban. It seems indeed that porn cannot be banned and that the PRC government is perhaps even secretly letting it into the country. But besides their bombastic cleanup campaigns, they also censor web communities that stand for sexual freedom or queer identity. It seems as if sexual minorities, sex artists and activists are much more vulnerable than those involved in mainstream commercial porn, especially at this moment when film festivals are being shut down and human rights activist are being tortured and detained. These are the dark times of China’s civil right and sexual creative outlet, but there is still so much porn and sex entertainment available that we can see it as safer outlet.

Ms. Jacobs, an associate professor in cultural studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, goes on to observe that porn has come to play a central role in the sexual education of young Chinese men – a disturbing trend, but one that might make sense in light of this month’s recent scandal over a new sex-education textbook for students in Beijing.

Ms. Jacobs’s has her own book on the topic of sex and China, “People’s Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet,” scheduled to be released in November.