The Next Emerging Market: China's Porn Industry

Ok, so I realize that this might come off as a joke, but I'm actually slightly serious about this. There was a recent article that I came across that said that some internet porn sites have started to become accessible in China. The article itself is pretty funny, with people mentioning that they happened to "stumble" across the sites, and that they surely weren't users or anything. There was even "a 29-year-old employee at a state-owned logistics company who did not want to be identified because he surfs for porn on business trips." How dare him!! But really, what does this actually mean for China? Most stats for the porn industry are rather vague, there are some interesting one that could be an indicator:

· According to Nielsen net ratings, more than a quarter of Internet users accessed an adult Web site in January 2010.

· America's porn industry is worth an estimated $14 billion.

· 72% of porn viewers are men (I so would have thought this was higher).

· There are about 300 million internet users in China, with a population of 1.3 billion, 670 million of which are male.

If China starts incrementally allowing access to porn sites, this could have a great financial, as well as cultural effect on China. First, the financial impact seems more or less obvious. A lot of people + a lot of porn = a lot of money (yes, American education is truly spectacular). The cultural effects are less obvious. The first question that comes to mind is this: If restrictions are reduced on porn, then could they be reduced on other things as well? Could this lead to a potential change in the Chinese government's monitoring of the internet? If so, the human right's implications are momentous. The availability of information, whether its political, economical, or whatever else, could potentially lead to a different society altogether. It could open up a complete new avenue for bloggers, news sites, evangelists, etc, which in turn would also lead to greater access for marketers, advertisers, businesses, and so on. This could also lead to greater opportunities with international organizations. For example, imagine if Google didn't have to worry about censorship issues. This would, of course, take some time to fully develop, but the impact is still clear.

As this story develops, it will be interesting to see if this is a one-time occurrence, or if this will lead to a changing of the tide for China. After all, as one individual commented in the original article, "The more they restrict something, the more people pay attention." And if China feels that the internet is too open anyway and that restriction just isn't working, then who knows what could happen.