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Chinese authorities crack down on pick-up artists
A crackdown on pick-up artists is under way in China.
A crackdown on pick-up artists is under way in China.
Last month, police in the eastern province of Jiangsu said it had made the country’s first-ever arrest of a self-proclaimed pick-up artist trainer. He was detained on fraud and obscenity charges.
Training materials found by provincial and regional police objectified women as “pets,” “prey” and “targets,” according to their official social media accounts.
The materials also coached men to seduce and control women in progressive steps, from how to extort money to how to ask women to hurt themselves or even commit suicide to prove their love.
The suspect is a 24-year-old man, surnamed Xu, who ran a pick-up artist training website charging men a premium for private lessons. Xu allegedly made over $4300 in three months.
Xu (front) was detained for five days and ordered to pay over $7,000 in fine.
“I really enjoyed women killing themselves to prove their love to me,” one of the students wrote to Xu in a private chat group, according to screenshots shared by the police.
Originating in the US as a set of techniques for men seeking sexual success with women, the pick-up artist (PUA) movement has been criticized for sexism and misogyny.
In 2014, three countries — Britain, Australia and Singapore — banned Julien Blanc, a US-based pick-up artist trainer. Critics said Blanc “dresses up his seminars as dating advice but actually focuses on tricking women into having sex, in order to make money.”
But in China, PUA has taken an even darker route, according to police.
Apart from making money by seducing women, some trainers seem to direct members to ultimately control women on a mental level.
“A trainer once boasted to his student if he manages to manipulate a woman into being willing to sacrifice her life, it would add to their relationship,” Kong Weiwei, a prominent social worker raising awareness on the topic, told the Beijing News.
Kong was quoted as saying that many women had come to her suffering tremendous emotional and physical distress from their PUA lovers. Some victims, she said, suffered from severe depression or experienced flashbacks after breaking up with their partners.
PUA arrived in China around 2007 by way of overseas Chinese students. Many students shared a translated copy of Neil Strauss’s 2005 best-seller The Game on online discussion boards, and it quickly became the talk of the internet.
The Game documented Neil Strauss' two-year journey in the secret society of pickup-artists. Some said it's a single man's dating bible. The author said he no longer believes in those techniques in a 2015 interview.
By 2018, there were about over 6 million Chinese paying and learning about PUA, according to Kong.
On June 3, a court in the southwestern city of Chengdu ruled against Langji Qinggan, a popular PUA training company, in a civil lawsuit brought by five former students, according to state media. The courses were ruled a violation of “social responsibility and ethics.”
The case is hailed as groundbreaking by rights advocates online. Many consider it the first civil lawsuit against a PUA company. One of the students said it should encourage others to bring future cases to court.
