Premarital sex is one of the sexual phenomena that has attracted the most attention to the Chinese public in the past 30 years. This survey on Chinese people’s premarital sexual behavior defines “premarital” as referring to the time before receiving a marriage certificate for the first time (excluding engagement or betrothal), regardless of whether a wedding has been held. The target scope only refers to those who have never received a marriage certificate at the time of the investigation.

Premarital sex outside of cohabitation has increased significantly

Among all unmarried men and women aged 18 to 61 nationwide who have not had sexual intercourse with anyone, the number of people who have kissed the opposite sex has increased from 40.5% in 2000 to 45.6% in 2010; The number of people who sexually fondle (touch or caress the sensitive parts of the opposite sex) increased from 30.6% in 2000 to 40.8% in 2010.

From the perspective of the gap between kissing and sexual caressing, in 2000, 10% of men and women who had kissed only kissed without further sexual caressing; but by 2010, the gap between the two was only 5%, that is, once the two parties kiss, 95% of the people will then engage in sexual caress. This raises an embarrassing question for traditional sexual ethics: If there is kissing or sexual caressing without sexual intercourse before marriage, does it count as "loss of virginity"?

Among the total unmarried population aged 18 to 61 in the country, that is, those who had not received a marriage certificate at the time of the survey, the proportion of those who had had sexual intercourse: 2000 = 37.7%; 2006 = 37.0%; 2010 = 49.1%.

In the past 10 years, unmarried cohabitation between men and women has remained at around 20%, with no significant growth. This shows that unmarried cohabitation is a very rational and necessary behavior. Both parties live together for many reasons. There is not much sexual morality in it, so it is not affected by changes in social customs. In other words, for at least 20% of all unmarried men and women, the current marriage registration system is not suitable for their needs, or some people are waiting to be registered. In particular, it should be noted that unmarried cohabitation as defined here refers to people who live together for more than one month. They are similar in nature to a couple. This is no different in nature from marriage. It just does not comply with the marriage system.

All unmarried sexual activities (including cohabitation) between men and women have increased significantly in the past 10 years, but the increase is not the largest. Since the proportion of cohabitation among them is relatively constant, this shows that the non-cohabitation sexual behaviors of unmarried people have increased significantly. The debate about premarital sex in Chinese society actually mainly talks about this situation.

Less than half are “virgins” before marriage

In terms of unmarried sex (including cohabitation), the proportion of men has increased from about 45% to about 55% in 10 years. In other words, less than half of the so-called "virgins" are now. However, the proportion of women only increased from 30% to more than 40%, which is far less than the proportion of men.

What is really noteworthy is that among men, the proportion of unmarried people who have had sexual intercourse with more than one person has risen linearly from about 15% to a little more than 45% in just 10 years; among women, it has increased from 2000 to 2000. It was close to nothing, and jumped to a little more than 30% in one fell swoop. This kind of situation of having too many sexual partners before marriage is the most intolerable in traditional Chinese sexual morality; but it has increased dramatically regardless of human will.

What makes traditional moral panic even more is: as of the time of the survey, the proportion of single men and women with multiple partners has been very close to the proportion of all premarital sexual intercourse. In layman's terms, this is "if it doesn't exist, it's nothing; if it exists, it's not one."

As mentioned above, since there are so many premarital sex among Chinese people, we sociologists should not study the old question of "who has had it", but should look at it the other way around.< /p>