Giving clients "manual relief" is considered prostitution by police, but not deemed illegal by prosecutors, a situation that has triggered controversy over loopholes in the current law.

In February 2001, China's Ministry of Public Security said that paying for any kind of sexual relations with people of the same or opposite gender was prostitution.

But there is nothing about specific sexual acts in written regulations and there are no laws about paying for masturbation, so prosecutors and judges in different regions follow different standards. This has led to problems in cracking down on the provision of erotic services, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

The topic became the subject of a controversy recently after police in Foshan City in south China's Guangdong Province were found to be unsure about whether to recommend a massage parlor owner for organizing prosecution after being caught hiring women to offer masturbation services.

In a similar case in July 2011, police arrested three people in a hair salon. They were jailed for organizing prostitution, but prosecutors later dropped the charges because "they should not be prosecuted for a criminal offense".

Under the law, masturbation services isn't an illegal act though it certainly disturbed social order and posed harm, Guangdong Higher People's Court said.

But the three men might have met a different fate in other regions. In 2004, a massage parlor operator in Fuzhou in Fujian Province was jailed for allowing prostitution, as was a man in Shanghai in 2010. Both had organized women to offer masturbation services.

The Guangdong court is calling on legislative authorities to make an amendment to the law to clarify the situation. Otherwise, massage parlors would spring up knowing they would only face no more than 15-day detention.

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