Saturday, December 4, 2004
Now, Playboy clubs in Shanghai
Associated Press Shanghai, China, December 4
Iconic brand Playboy plans to open a private club in China's commercial capital of Shanghai - a first for the communist nation which still bans the company's flagship men's magazine.
Styled a "lifestyle club," the outlet will open next spring in the city's Hongqiao district, Lisa Chang, a spokeswoman for the project, said on Friday. The area, home to much of the city's large foreign population, already boasts a franchise of the American Hooters chain known for its skimpily dressed waitresses. Chang gave no other details, but a formal announcement was expected at a news conference by Playboy Enterprises International Inc. and Shanghai Entertainment Ltd. planned for Tuesday. More than two decades of economic openness and rising urban prosperity have eroded the Communist Party's deeply conservative social policies. Prostitution, while still illegal, is commonplace in most parts of the country and surveys show broad acceptance of premarital sex among young people.
Beauty contests, once frowned upon, have been widely embraced in recent years, with the southern city of Sanya this week hosting the Miss World pageant for the second year running.
However, China still bans the sale of Playboy and other magazines featuring photographs of naked women, although some such volumes are sold legally as art books.
The government this summer also launched a crackdown on Internet pornography, shutting nearly 1,500 Web sites and handing out sentences of up to 15 years to people running them. Chicago-based Playboy Enterprises Inc. publishes Playboy magazine in 18 countries. The company's famous rabbit head logo is also licensed for a variety of products, especially popular in China and other parts of Asia.
However, the company's Playboy Clubs that were a fixture of 1960s America are long gone. The last one, located in Manila, the Philippines, closed in 1991.
The company announced last month it had rebounded to post a third-quarter profit of US$1.9 million (euro1.5 million), as advertising rose sharply at the company's flagship magazine.
© HT Media Ltd. 2004.