China's Sin City police chief sacked
Observers believe a recent government offensive against the illegal sex industry is part of a wider campaign against corruption being waged by President Xi Jinping
The dog-loving police chief of a gritty southern factory hub dubbed China's Sin City has been sacked after failing to bring its rampant underground sex trade to heel.
Yan Xiaokang, who was also the deputy mayor of Dongguan, a city of more than eight million inhabitants in Guangdong province, was stripped of his duties on Friday for "dereliction of duty".
Mr Yan had been tasked with bringing prostitution under control in the coastal manufacturing city and had reportedly pioneered the use of canine units in a bid to cut crime.
However, a high-profile report aired last Sunday on CCTV, the state-run broadcaster, helped secure his downfall by exposing one of China'sworst-kept secrets.
Despite repeated government "crackdowns" Dongguan's notorious sex trade continued to thrive in thousands of underground clubs and massage parlours.
The police chief's "failures led to the persistent illegal sex trade in Dongguan, which has reflected very badly on the city, both domestically and internationally," the provincial branch of the Communist Party said in a statement that was reproduced by Xinhua, the state news agency.
As deputy mayor, Mr Yan played a central role in efforts to shake off Dongguan's dismal reputation as a tawdry oasis of karaoke clubs and brothels.
He pumped government funds into the local Cantonese opera scene and helped organise animation trade fairs that drew global brands including Disney.
A 2013 propaganda campaign produced in collaboration with the Discovery Channel positioned Dongguan as a cradle of traditional Chinese culture.
As police chief, Mr Yan also took action. Last year, he imported hundreds of police dogs from Kunming in Yunnan province in a bid to make Dongguan's streets safer and the tactic appeared to work.
With canine units patrolling Dongguan, burglary and street robbery rates reportedly plummeted in some areas.
Yet the city's four-legged constables did little to drive out unscrupulous pimps and brothel owners whose businesses were estimated to employ hundreds of thousands of locals.
When more than 6,500 police officers stormed almost 2,000 "entertainment venues" in the wake of last Sunday's CCTV report, they found not only dozens of naked, red-faced philanderers but also a clandestine sex industry that was alive and kicking.
Prostitution played such a key role in the city's economy that the crackdown threatened to leave a 50 billion yuan (£4.92 billion) dent in local economy, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post claimed this week.
Similar anti-vice operations were reported across China this week, with 27 arrests made in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang.
A columnist for the South China Morning Post suggested Xi Jinping, China's president, had ordered "a protracted crackdown on vice ... in a big-picture effort to clean up the country's image."
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