China Bans “Laviscious Ads”

The Chinese government has decided to do something about “social pollution” by banning sex related ads from the air:

China has banned television and radio ads for push-up bras, figure-enhancing underwear and sex toys in the communist government’s latest move to purge the nation’s airwaves of what it calls social pollution.

Regulators have already targeted ads using crude or suggestive language, behavior, and images, tightening their grip on television and radio a few weeks ahead of a twice-a-decade Communist Party congress at which some new senior leaders will be appointed.

The latest move by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, or SARFT, also bans advertisements for sexual aids such as tonics that claim to boost performance in bed.

While this is certainly bad news for Chinese free speech advocates and China’s sex industry, there is one positive thing to take from this for here in the U.S. Next time you hear some moralist talk about banning ads for sex toys or lingerie, you can look them right in the eye and wittily retort, “What are you? Some kind of Communist?”

Good for a chuckle, anyway.

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Alex Knapp
About Alex Knapp
Alex Knapp is Associate Editor at Forbes for science and games. He was a longtime blogger elsewhere before joining the OTB team in June 2005 and contributed some 700 posts through January 2013. Follow him on Twitter @TheAlexKnapp.

Comments

  1. markm says:

    I’m all for free speech but i’m down with banning the sex toy adds. Something about seeing a gas powered elephant trunk on my TV is disgusting.

  2. G.A.Phillips says:

    I’m all for free speach too,but when I was in the bis. and used to go to a porn sellers free speach rally, I was just another stupid liberal. Selling things with ads using crude or suggestive language, behavior, and images, has nothing to do with our right, so lets stop fooling oursleves and each other.

    and if I see one more comercial about eating a pill so you can bang your wife when the time is right on primetime T.V. im going to start to cry.

    Plus as I see it the last thing China needs are sex enhancements, lol, that a lot o’batteries……
    we gonna go from global warming to global vibrating………