In this book, Elizabeth Remick argues that the regulation of prostitution was inextricably intertwined with local state-building in China during the first half of the 20th century. Through an examination of archival sources and government reports, Remick contends that state officials in China took measures to regulate prostitution in order to resolve social issues such as public order, public health and gender relationships. Prostitution, as Remick states, is closely linked to the local state, politics and gender relations. In regulating prostitution, state officials transformed local states by shaping and reshaping the structure, functions, capacities and apparatus of local states. In view of this linkage between state-building and prostitution policy, Remick contends that gender should be written into the history of state-building in China, despite the fact that women were excluded from political life.

State officials, as Remick points out, enforce, regulate and restructure gender relations through regulating prostitution. As she contends, Chinese state builders were no different from European state builders. While the former utilized modern police systems to control and manage prostitution, the latter established modern states through policing and regulating gender and sexuality. Remick provides an account of the ways in which Chinese state builders, through controlling prostitution, intervened on gender relations, gender roles, gender behaviours and women's sexuality. In so doing, Chinese state officials underscored that prostitution and regulation of prostitution were political and public matters, rather than private matters.

This book consists of seven chapters. The introduction lays out the main points of the book, emphasizes the linkage between prostitution policy and state-building, and notes the limitations of the study. The first chapter offers an overview of the history of prostitution policy in China during the Republican era, and points out that cities in China adopted several forms of prostitution policies. The following three chapters constitute the main bulk of the book, respectively exploring three cities – Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Kunming – that were representatives of the three prevailing prostitution policies. Each of these three chapters starts with a political history of the city, followed by its prostitution policy, and ends with the ramifications of the policy on local state structure, function and capacity. Chapter five investigates the prostitution rescue institution. It argues that although this institute originated with Christian ethics, it evolved into an establishment that repatriated women and girls back to their “proper” roles in family, thus reproducing the patriarchal conditions wherein abuse of women was initiated. The concluding chapter cautions against decriminalization and legalization of prostitution. Remick emphasizes problems inherent in these two policies and underscores the crucial role of the social, legal and political milieu in devising prostitution policies.

Remick explores three major prostitution policies in China that greatly affected local state-building, albeit in different ways. The first approach was light regulation. This approach was the most prevalent one. It regulated light taxation, codes of conducts in brothels, prostitute registration, inspection of STDs and a prostitute rescue institution. The city of Hangzhou was an example of this approach. The policy of light regulation allowed the police department to grow in order to register prostitutes, manage the prostitution rescue institution, levy taxes and incarcerate unregistered prostitutes. At the same time, some health clinics were established to inspect prostitutes. Due to the small tax amount from prostitution, however, state building was only limited to the police staff and health clinics.

The second was a revenue-intensive approach. This approach prioritized heavy taxation and accumulation of revenue for the local government over social order, social morality and public health. Guangzhou was an example of this approach. Similar to the policy of light taxation, the revenue-intensive policy led to growth of the police staff to carry out the task. Thanks to the revenue from prostitution tax, city projects were well funded and state-building was tremendous. Indeed, prostitution tax played such a significant role that it helped build China's most modern local government in the city of Guangzhou.

The third policy was coercion-intensive. This approach segregated brothels from the rest of the society by providing a quarantine space for registered prostitutes. This space was run and managed by the police, who monitored closely prostitutes' behaviour and health status on a daily basis. In addition to brothels, the police also managed the prostitute rescue institution or a penal institution where unregistered prostitutes were incarcerated. The physical alienation and constant surveillance of brothels and penal institutions were intended to protect public morality and maintain social control. Health clinics and doctors also joined the police staff. Kunming was an example of this coercion-intensive approach. This approach enabled the police system to develop into the most dominant apparatus in the local government.

In the end, Remick argues that since local state-building hinged upon state officials' perception of gender and gender relations, the configuration of gender is critical to the study of state-building in China. In the book, the sheer focus on structural ramifications of prostitution policy dismisses women's voice and women's lived experiences, which could shed light on the prostitution policies. Without grounding the policies on women's real lives, Remick delineates a list of problems and limitations of decriminalization and legalization of prostitution in the 21st century. The book would benefit from paying attention to the voices of Chinese sex workers today, who demand the right to work as sex workers and call for decriminalization and legalization of prostitution. This book would also benefit from an engagement with the proliferation of grounded research worldwide that shows that criminalization policies are a culprit in the exploitative and stigmatizing social milieu for sex workers. That said, this book should be welcomed by scholars who have an interest in topics such as gender, state building, history and prostitution in China.