Police have closed down the Hilton hotel in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing after uncovering a brothel operating in the basement.
A raid on Saturday night on the Diamond Dynasty karaoke club netted 102 suspects and 22 people were formally detained for investigation. It was the third time since last November that the hotel, operated and managed by the Hilton Group, but owned by a local enterprise, had come under suspicion for vice.
A police statement described an all-in-one service for prostitution involving hotel managers, security staff, porters, receptionist and entertainers. Several people were also held in connection with drugs-related offences.
A receptionist at the hotel said: “We are closed for the present. We will not be open for any bookings until after July 5 because of security reasons.”
The operators of the basement brothel appeared to consider themselves immune from a sweeping crackdown on vice in the sprawling city of Chongqing that has netted hundreds of gangsters as well as one of the city’s top policemen – now on death row.
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Among the reasons the Chongqing “mafia” had become so powerful was links with the city’s police. State media said several police officials had been involved in the hotel’s illegal activities, providing a protective umbrella for the prostitution ring.
The raid on the Hilton comes amid a nationwide sweep on vice and the latest in a series of “strike hard” campaigns by the police, following up on similar crackdowns in 1983, 1996 and 2001 when tens of thousands were arrested and thousands executed as China tried to halt a surge in crime.
The latest anti-vice sweep follows a secret police fact-finding mission between February and April in five major cities to investigate underground prostitution and gambling.
Several of Beijing’s biggest nightclubs have since been closed. The Passion Club and several other popular nightspots where China’s new-rich would drink late into the night with escort girls have shut their doors and 557 prostitutes have been arrested.
Even one-girl brothels down narrow Beijing alleys where prostitutes sit bathed in pink light at picture windows, watching television while they wait for customers, have been shuttered in the last few weeks.
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One Beijing police officer described the operation as the most severe crackdown yet on “escort services” in the capital.
Many karaoke clubs in China serve simply as a front for prostitution, which was wiped out by Mao Zedong as soon as the Communist Party swept to power in 1949 but which has seen a stunning revival in the past few years.