XXX Factor

Lin

ing a wall of the factory showroom like sentinels, the dildos are the color and size of rainbow popsicles and give off a faint electric glow, except for the pink one that appears to have the head of George Washington. Life-size blow-up dolls hang nearby, blonds, brunettes and redheads with crimson mouths shaped in a permanent 'O,' as if surprised to find themselves rolling off the production line of a dingy Chinese factory. The sheer variety of sex toys, both anatomically correct and physiologically implausible, being readied for shipment from Wenzhou Loves Health Products is disturbing. But as company president Wu Wei says, "Everyone has their own taste." Which, hopefully, explains the inflatable cow—a black-spotted Holstein—tucked in the corner. "The cow is ordered by European companies," Wu says, "maybe because Westerners treat animals more equally?"

He shrugs. The sex toy king of China doesn't judge. It's bad for business. With his crew cut, oversize glasses, blue jeans and phlegmatic manner, 33-year-old Wu looks like a teenager slouching in the back of sex-ed class—but he's an empire builder emblematic of China's growing entrepreneurial class. His company, headquartered in the industrial city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, is China's only major government- licensed erotica manufacturer. The plant daily pumps out some 10,000 sex toys destined for bedroom drawers worldwide, but Wu and his Japanese venture partner have grander plans: a $12 million investment in a new factory that could triple Loves' production and push sales past $100 million.

It's an ambitious goal. Loves' sales last year were just $8 million. But with China's sexual revolution blooming, the domestic market for onanism aids is expanding at a pace that can only be described as blistering. The communist era of enforced asceticism and prudery has been giving way to more liberal, if not libertine, attitudes. After Beijing legalized the sale of sex toys in 1994, "I knew that sex could be sold," Wu says. Even so, when he applied for a license, he soft-pedaled, pushing to get his wares classified as medical devices. "I wanted to promote the product as a tool for social stability," he says, "something that could help teenagers who want to experiment with sex, cut down on STDs, help stop couples from divorcing, reduce the number of rapists." Rapists? "Two or three, maybe."

Well, idle hands are the devil's playthings. But redeeming social value is less of a worry these days. "Even women no longer shy away from buying such things," says Miss Wang, a lab-coat-wearing saleswoman at downtown Wenzhou's Adam Eve Health Center, part of a nationwide sex-shop chain. On the dusty glass shelves of the store sit many of the products from the Loves factory. The names range from the whimsical ("The Plump Landlady") to the boastful ("The Great Penis") to the perspicacious ("The Strongly Systolic"). Prices range from $1 to $150 plus. Wang, who is frequently asked for advice because the government still insists that sex toys bear nondescriptive packaging, says she has got over her initial embarrassment: "I don't feel at all shy or nervous about my job."

Neither does Wu, a native of Wenzhou, long renowned for producing hard-nosed businessmen. His concerns are familiar to entrepreneurs the world over: competition, innovation and industrial espionage. Boosted by an e-commerce website, sales were up 1,200% last year, half of the total accounted for by exports. Wu attributes rapid growth in part to advanced R. and D. With the help of his Japanese partner (the Japanese are, unsurprisingly, the leaders in sex toy innovation), he is developing unusual products to fill new niches of sexual proclivity-and not just farm animals. Works-in-progress include a "lovebot," a humanoid doll with lifelike skin that will be able to move and speak lines such as, "Am I going too fast for you?" Wu claims companies in Hong Kong and Taiwan are so worried they've tried to steal his designs by sending spies posing as foreign journalists to his factory.

Like Wu, Wen Jing Feng, president of the Beijing-based Adam Eve Health Centers, is trying to ensure China is not left behind in the race to perfect the vibrator. During a question-and-answer segment at last month's Boao Economic Forum, a regional summit held on Hainan Island, Wen urged Prime Minister Zhu Rongji to work with Thailand on a sex industry technology-transfer agreement. To the amusement of the audience, Zhu said that sex was not on the agenda.

Maybe not for Zhu, but sex is, in fact, on every agenda, as Freud so famously declared. After much pressure, Wu allows a glimpse of his factory's musty purification room, where six Chinese women of varying ages slap translucent disinfectant on a pile of swirl-shaped green dildos, rapidly passing them down the line like volunteer fire fighters. Wu fades to the back and begins inspecting a box of pink toys, examining the motors and picking minute imperfections off the skin. With sex toys, quality is job one. "The market will be mature," says Wu, "when Chinese people think using this product is just like when they're thirsty, they drink water."