Sex education in modern and contemporary China: Interrupted debates across the last century

Since the late 1980s sex education has been widely promoted in the PRC, but this is not the first time in China's modern history that attempts to develop sex education have been made. The present essay traces the development of sex education debates over the last century, identifying the historical, political and social contexts in which they originated. It looks at contemporary sex education as part of a fragmented history characterised by thematic and ideological continuities as well as interruptions. In its focus on contemporary debates, this essay shows that sex education in China is largely dominated by an ‘abstinence only’ approach which remained scarcely questioned until recent times.