Chinese shun sex for a good, old-fashioned bank

The Chinese appear to have dismally failed to grasp the primary use of Google, with searches on the word "sex" ranking way down the list of most-Googled terms in the country last year. Leading the overall searches list was "QQ", apparently an "instant message service and a brand of car", according to Reuters. Next up was the …

[Matt Bradley]

Fishy

"Oh, alright then, we made that last one up"

... As opposed to the rest of the stats, which were made up by chinese.gov?

Google.cn does still cooperate with the local government does it not? I wonder who approved these stats?

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is a surprise!

The chinese have always been far more commercially aware, for at least the last 3000 years or so.

[Cameron Colley]

Isn't it illegal to search for porn in China?

Or is porn one of the things allowed past the great firewall?

[Anonymous Coward]

Headline

I assumed that the headline was rhyming slang. That it isn't is even sadder than if it was

[Kit Temple]

The reason for the low sex ranking

Most Chinese people using the internet do so from an internet cafe or at work. At both these locations it would be very socially embarrasing to look at pornographic material. The internet cafe local to me in China has some private booths that can be curtained off, I assume to surf porn in more privacy, but the cost of using these computers is three times more expensive per hour due to the extra space they take up.

There may be more searching of sex topics on the bigger web portals like Sina and Sohu - since a lot of young Chinese people want to learn about how contraception works etc. (and it doesn't get taught well by both schools and parents due to the cultural embarrasment over the subject). But it would still be very embarrasing for a young person to be seen in an internet cafe to be reading this material so that might only get done when the internet cafe is mostly empty.

Finally - Chinese people really are less sex-obsessive than Western people. So even if everyone moved to private computers there would still be a lower percentage of time spent hunting for porn.

[Anonymous Coward]

just like true brits

With the door wedged shut the curtains drawn and the lights off.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load

What a load of bankers, I bet their banking day and night, even having a quick bank at work. It's a wonder they haven't all gone blind....

[Anonymous Coward]

Err...

Don't the Chinese government put people in prison for looking at / owning porn? I'd suggest that a Chinese prison wouldn't be up there with staying in one of Her Madge's hostels (not that I'm suggesting they are that nice)...

[Morely Dotes]

Sex is like air

Not important unless you can't get enough.

[Chris]

Over one billion served.......

You don't get to a population of over a billion without being somewhat interested in sex.

Maybe they're just bored with it at this point.

[Anonymous Coward]

QQ

Is a smiley face that indicates someone is crying. It's synonymous with T_T. I can't see what that has to do with Chinese sex. Jewish, however...

[b166er]

Sex is like a bank account

Once you withdraw, you lose all interest

[Steve Roper]

And in other news...

...The forces of Eastasia have won a glorious victory over the Oceanian enemy! I am authorised to say that this action brings the war with Oceania within measurable distance of its end! There have been almost a million prisoners! It has been an utter rout!

[Fab De Marco]

It's not about sex obsession Its the culture

China population is not due to the the country being obsessed with sex. It's a Cultural thing. Chinese parents want a boy because the culture believes that only men will be sucessfull enough to make mummy and daddy comfortable as they grow old. So what a lot of Chinese couples do is keep trying till they have a boy.

This is why many chinese orphanages are filled with girls. This and the lack of education about contraception is why the population is so high.

[Steve]

@Fab

The population problem is largely down to a previous government policy that made it the duty of the chinese to have large families.

They then realised (20 years later) that they had a population problem and imposed the one child law.

[Ishkandar]

Actions speak louder than words....

...how else would there be 1.3 billion of em !! No point in being self-satisfied in front of a PC screen !!

[David Pickering]

vetted

what a crock of sh!t

[Anonymous Coward]

A title

Or perhaps it might have something to do with the fact that almost no chinese own a pc- who wants to watch porn in a dingy fluorescent room surrounded by hundreds of strangers?