Playboy's Shanghai `Lifestyle Club' Plan May Stall (Update1) Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Playboy Enterprises Inc.'s plan to open a ``lifestyle club'' in Shanghai next year won't be approved, the Beijing Morning Post newspaper reported today, citing an unidentified official from Shanghai's Commerce Bureau. Michael Nussbaum, the head of Shanghai Entertainment Ltd., which hopes to operate the club under license from Chicago-based Playboy Enterprises, said he wasn't aware of any objections. The Shanghai bureau did not respond to repeated requests for comment. ``We will adhere to the rules and regulations of applying'' for approval, Nussbaum told a Shanghai press conference. The club would be the world's only Playboy venue. Playboy Enterprises is seeking to open a seven-story nightspot in western Shanghai with three restaurants, a boutique, cabaret, disco, spa, wine and cigar bars -- and the signature Playboy Bunny waitresses. Communist China, where Playboy magazine is banned, isn't ready for such Western openness, according to Chinese investor Ma Jun. ``The idea of such a club goes against the society's morals and customs,'' said Ma, who helps manage $100 million at E Fund Management Co. in the southern provincial capital of Guangzhou. ``It won't be so easy to get approval.'' Playboy's flagship club in Chicago was shuttered as far back as 1986 after being attacked as demeaning to women. The company's last Playboy haunt, in Manila, closed in 1991. China last year lifted a 54-year ban on beauty pageants, formerly deemed decadent by the Communist Party. `Sex Sells' Hainan province hosted its second Miss World pageant at the weekend in the seaside city of Sanya. The city also will stage next year's event, according to pageant organizers and Sanya Mayor Chen Ci. The Shanghai Playboy club is planned for Hongqiao district, which also is home to a franchise of Hooters. The restaurant chain, owned by Atlanta-based Hooters Inc., is known for waitresses who wear low-cut T-shirts. ``Sex sells around the world and China is no different from any other country in that regard,'' said Timothy Condon, the Singapore-based head of Asian markets research at ING Groep NV. Work already has started on the Shanghai club, Nussbaum said. Joint-venture partners Shanghai Entertainment and Shanghai Times Supermarket Investment & Construction Co will operate it. A members-only section will be included. The venture, 60 percent owned by Shanghai Times, has registered capital of $12.5 million, Nussbaum said. He plans to open in the fourth quarter of 2005. `High-Margin, Low-Risk' The venture's agreement with Playboy Enterprises doesn't include rights to Playboy magazine for men or the company's television networks or Web sites. Playboy Enterprises in October signed a licensing agreement with Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas and the Nine Group to develop a nightclub and casino in the U.S. gaming capital. The Shanghai and Las Vegas plans ``represent a new high- margin low-risk growth business for the company,'' Christie Hefner, the chief executive of Playboy Enterprises and daughter of the founder, Hugh Hefner, said in a statement. Annual revenues from the two clubs will total about $5 million, starting in 2006, when the Las Vegas property is due to open, the statement said. Playboy Enterprises' shares have fallen 22 percent this year. Nussbaum is an associate publisher of New York-based News Communications Inc., according to the statement. News Communications prints 23 weekly publications, many of them free. Hugh Hefner opened the first Playboy Club in Chicago in 1960 -- a time when China was still closed to the outside world. Fishnet Tights The members-only clubs were known for their Playboy Bunny waitresses, who dressed in corsets with fishnet tights, rabbit ears and fluffy tails. Members carried their own keys -- complete with a head in the shape of the Playboy rabbit symbol. The Shanghai club will have Playboy Bunnies, the company statement said. China still deems p*rnography off limits. Besides banning publications such as Playboy, the Communist Party censors content in newspapers and magazines. The government also has blocked access to hundreds of Web sites this year because of pornographic or violent content. Between February and August, 1,600 Internet cafes were closed for allowing children to play violent or adult-only games, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency. Companies such as Playboy and Hooters are expanding into China as economic growth lifts incomes. China's per-capita income in urban areas topped $1,000 for the first time last year as the economy grew 9.3 percent. The economy grew 9.5 percent in the first nine months of 2004. The wealth gap between China's rich urbanites and poor farmers is growing, said Thomas Wong, who heads the sociology department at the University of Hong Kong. ``The fact that there is a going to be a Playboy Club in Shanghai underlines this inequality,'' Wong said. http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nifea&&sid=am6OAuFrG89Q ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I seriously can't believe they are banning this on moral grounds. It's just the same as p*rnography. Yeah it's illegal, but most adults still want it. The end result is that you have a street vendors at every corner selling this stuff and never gets checked upon and selling this stuff to 13 year olds. Seriously, how can you ban a playboy club in shanghai when there's 2 "hair salon" on every block of most residential areas. Yeah most of them cut hair (and give damn good hair cuts on the cheap too) but that can't be majority of income. It just can't.
Isn't Shanghai one of the places you can easily get underage prostitutes to do virtually anything you want? (not sure, just asking a question)
Not sure why Playboy would even think it was possible if they can't sell their magazines there. I'm guessing here, but I bet if a native Chinese company wanted to do a similar thing, they'd have an easier time getting approval. For developing and underdeveloped countries, economic imperialism is an indignity, but it is doubled when that imperialism is based on a vice industry. See American gambling and prostitution in Cuba. See the Opium Wars. If someone is going to profit on the vice of the Chinese, it should at least be someone who is Chinese.
Nah, things like that are actually cracked/looked down upon a lot more. It's not as blatant as places like Thailand, and most of the city is still fairly conservative morally. It's just another open eye, closed eye things. People know they exist, most people know how to get access, most people choose to refrain from going for it most of the time and no one publicly advertise them. In another sense that's relateble to, think of the regulation similar to what U.S. do with weed.
No. I think there are probably a few houses o ill repute, but I am guessing that you could have more options here in Houston. Now Bangkok....jeez louise, PatPong made me feel like taking a shower.
Heh, you didn't notice the hair salons in Shanghai then did you? Soi Pattpong = sin incarnate. I loved it.
From what I've heard, pretty much anywhere in Asia, its like this...sad but true... However, China is not as liberal as Thailand for example, but it does go on...
Well, like I said, Shanghai isn't bad at all. It's there and people know it's there, but the city resembles New York more than anything. The funny thing is, most of my family over there thinks of U.S. as the country of sin incarnate from what they see on the movies and think people in the U.S. fu*k for no reason at all or very fast. It's really funny how people of the two countries can have misconceptions of each other.
I'm still wondering why Shanghai instead of Hong Kong? It seems to me like it would be easier to set this up in HK considering that the last time I was there I remember seeing the Playboys being sold there legally. Under the one country two systems HK still has more independence from the economic and cultural regulation of the PRC than Shanghai.
Probably have to do with the fact that most mainlanders would go to Shanghai instead of Hongkong. Cheaper, closer, but just as much glitz and glamor..
