While prostitution already existed as a social relation between men and women in China, it was highly intensified and assumed a new basis and new forms in the Malaya. Chinese women who were prostitutes were imported into Malaya for the brothel market. They were distinguished from other female immigrants and formed a distinct category of working women in their situation as women sold or transferred in a traffic in women, their involvement in prostitution as their sole or main source of work, and their tight control by male trafficking agencies and by colonial state policies specifically directed at them. The traffic in women, the agencies involved and the male domains of mining camps and towns largely set the context of the prostitutes' working conditions and 1ives.

Prostitution and Control by Secret Societies

The traffic in Chinese women for prostitution in Malaya began around the mid-nineteenth century, at the same time as tin mining expanded. Traffickers went to villages in southern China and by various means ranging from contacts, cajoles, deceptions, purchase or kidnap, acquired young girls and women. They were then shipped to the Straits Settlements (SS) and other parts of Southeast Asia. The Chinese emigration authorities were suspicious of female emigrants whom they assumed went abroad for “immoral” activities but there was no official restriction on female emigration (Chen Ta 1939).

At the SS ports, there were no restrictions on the immigration of prostitutes as long as they entered prostitution of their “own free will” (Purcell 1967, p. 174) and brothels were legal until 1927. While some prostitutes were allocated to brothels in the SS, others were sold or delivered to brothel keepers and secret societies in the mining camps and towns in the Federated Malay States (FMS). Yet others were bought by individual men who had left their wives in China or who wanted concubines. It is estimated that 80 per cent of all young girls who came to Singapore in the 1870s were sold to brothels.