COLUMN ONE : A Sexual Revolution in China : Romantic love is no longer ‘counter-revolutionary.’ Attitudes toward marriage, premarital sex and extramarital relations have changed.

Marriage had turned out to be a big disappointment, the pregnant young woman confided. “I was so stupid, so naive to get married so young,” she said. “Everyone said so, but I just rebelled against them all.”

Things got rocky fast. The university graduate, with a good job at a publishing house, started looking for lovers. They were easy to find.

“If I hadn’t been married, I would have played even harder,” said the woman, 26. After a string of casual relationships and yiye fuqi (one-night stands), she asked her husband for a divorce. He refused. She dropped the idea and now hopes a child will hold them together.

A decade ago, Chinese women still wore baggy clothes designed to hide their figures. Romantic love was often viewed as almost “counterrevolutionary.” And a kiss came close to being a marriage proposal.

But the power of the Communist Party to dictate private behavior now is eroding. Beneath the rigid veneer of Chinese society today is a stunning relaxation in sexual mores. Even the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing two years ago and a subsequent wave of political repression has failed to stop this trend.

“These past 10 years, we’ve changed our thinking about many subjects--economics, politics, everything is changing. But nothing has changed as much as concepts of marriage and sex,” commented Pan Suiming, a sociologist at People’s University of China who specializes in sexology. “This is China’s sexual revolution. It’s already happened.”

The incidence of venereal disease, still low by Western standards, is rising nationwide at annual rates of about 25%. It is a particular problem among prostitutes.

Divorces are increasing by 10% per year, with two-thirds requested by wives.

The Shanghai Sex Sociological Research Center reported last year that of 23,000 people polled in 15 provinces, 86% approved of sex before marriage and 69% condoned extramarital affairs. The sample was not scientific, but the responses--and their publication--would have been inconceivable only a few years ago.

In Beijing’s university district, sex has become a far safer pastime than politics.

This spring, Pan supervised a survey in which questionnaires were distributed to a random sample of 1,003 unmarried university students in Beijing, including equal numbers of men and women. Of 559 respondents, 106 said they have engaged in sex. Asked to guess what percentage of college students are sexually experienced, the single men’s average estimate was 47%; the single women’s average estimate was 8%.

Lack of private space is a problem for young lovers. At universities, students live crammed eight per room. But the more resourceful find ways to briefly rent off-campus apartments, typically equipped with little more than a bed. These have become the local version of love hotels.

Not everyone can make such comfortable arrangements. Many young people have little choice but to meet in parks. And where, five years ago, couples were likely to sit demurely together on a bench, it is now acceptable to hug and kiss, ignoring passersby only a few feet away. Some couples disappear into the bushes.

Many parents do not approve.

An architect who recently married his lover said they had kept their affair secret from their parents right up until the wedding: “If they had found out that we were having sex, they would have been angry, or at least have pretended not to know so they wouldn’t have to confront it.”

His own parents are so conservative, he said, that they might have reported him to the police as a sexual deviant.

Sex between consenting adults is technically not illegal in China. But police have broad powers to suppress activities that they consider anti-social. Elderly women who staff local “neighborhood committees”--the grass-roots eyes and ears of the government--can also try to stop activities of which they disapprove. But a discreet affair is likely to escape interference.

The Communist Party’s prestige, and its ability to impose its will at all levels of society, peaked in the first decade after the 1949 triumph of the revolution, a time when the centrally planned economy and rural communes made social control easy. Prostitution, concubinage and venereal disease were virtually wiped out; arranged marriages were discouraged; the ideal of a freely chosen, lifetime partner was promoted.

But these moral ideals quickly broke down as change swept Chinese society, first in the chaos of the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, then in the 1979 economic reforms.

By the early ‘80s, communes were broken up, giving peasants renewed control of farm plots and family life. For city people, opportunities to make and spend money expanded rapidly. Television advertisements promoted consumer values. It was no longer politically taboo to wear nice clothes or to be concerned about one’s looks. Dance halls and karaoke bars (spots where patrons sing to a recorded musical background) opened. Dating became acceptable.

Means of birth control were not always available to unmarried youths, but women knew they could always get an abortion. The Communist Party, meanwhile, became preoccupied with only two goals: economic development and hanging on to power.

“Before 1979,” explained Pan, “marriage was most important--it dominated sex and love. Without marriage, it was impossible to sleep together, nor could you think of love. What Chinese people used to mean by ‘love’ was the feeling that grew between husband and wife after they were married many years. This is what they meant, not some feeling you have before even getting married!”

Now, Pan said, urbanites younger than 30 “rank sex and love as equally important. Marriage isn’t that important.”

While the loosening of government-imposed social controls has brought a welcome measure of personal freedom, state-run media express great concern about trends in the countryside, especially the abduction or sale of women and girls who are forced into marriage or prostitution.

The official People’s Daily reported that in the poverty-stricken eastern region of Sichuan province, “currently, on the average, each year almost 10,000 women and children are abducted and sold to other areas.” The practice is difficult to stop because it is so profitable.

The report offered no nationwide figures on total “abductions” but said that from November, 1989, to October, 1990, police throughout China “rescued” 10,000 women and children who had been abducted and sold. In the eastern province of Shandong, it added, police have over the past decade dealt with 18,000 “criminals” involved in abductions and sales.

Pan said he doubts that “abduction” is an accurate way to describe what happened to all these women. But the figures are believable, if they include women who acquiesced to sight-unseen arranged marriages in which a go-between gets paid for his services. “Most of them are willing,” he said. “They haven’t been kidnaped. They want to go to a richer place.”

The People’s Daily offered a similar analysis: “Some women in the poor areas are cheated because they want to marry someone . . . to leave their poor native places. Some male peasants in some areas want to ‘buy a bride’ when looking for a spouse, and think that ‘buying a bride’ is cheaper than marrying a local girl. In addition, some local leaders do not fully understand the seriousness and danger of this crime.”

The answer to the problem, the newspaper said, is tougher law enforcement and efforts to “get at the root of the problem” by “launching education on the legal system, to enable the masses to consciously resist the illegal activity of abducting and selling people; helping the male peasants who have difficulty in finding a spouse solve their marriage problem and instructing the great masses of women to consciously resist the ugly habit of commercial marriage, to build up their own pride, confidence, independence and self-strengthening spirit.”

Old customs, by which parents reach engagement agreements for children, also are making a comeback in some rural areas. The People’s Daily reported that a survey in the town of Leling, in Shandong province, found that 21% of children ages 8 to 14 were engaged, while 30% of those ages 15 to 22 were betrothed. Of provincial youths between 15 years old and the legal marriage age--20 for women, 22 for men--about 5% have illegally married.

In the cities, one of the notable changes brought about by Chinese society’s shifting views on sex is that homosexuality--unspoken of in China for so long that many people do not know the word for it--has become visible.

Police once arrested homosexuals and imprisoned them in “re-education through labor” camps.

Now, while social stigmas remain intense, the existence of hangout spots is tolerated. Homosexuality is considered a psychological disorder and is sometimes “treated” with electroshock. Those picked up by police are likely to be lectured, then released in 15 days.

According to official accounts, China remains almost free of the HIV virus. But the AIDS situation may be more severe than statistics show. Since concern with the disease first began, China has tested 480,000 people considered to be at relatively high risk of exposure; 493 people have been found to have HIV antibodies, including 65 foreigners. Only five AIDS deaths have been reported.

Despite China’s changing attitudes toward sex, a nationwide effort to suppress various “evils” continues. An assault on pornography and prostitution was launched in late 1989. More than 20,000 prostitutes and 150,000 of their patrons were arrested in this campaign by the end of last year, according to official statistics.

Prostitution, however, remains a growing business. Even in politically repressed Beijing, prostitutes can be readily spotted at some nightspots. In the more freewheeling southern cities, they openly seek customers in the lobbies of many hotels.

“It’s no longer possible to meddle in the lives of every individual,” Pan explained. “You can’t depend on commands to solve problems anymore. It’s not just that controls are relaxed. The entire society has changed.”

Times researcher Nick Driver contributed to this article.