OFFICIALS from China's Women's Federation and Chinese feminists used to oppose beauty contests, saying they were products of a male-dominated society. Last year, the 54-year ban on beauty pageants was lifted and China hosted the 2003 Miss World pageant.

On the question of whether this indicated the country was still male-dominated or more open, most people seem to be inclined to accept the latter conclusion.

Experts said the lifting of the ban was a milestone in the extension of China's reform and opening-up policy and a freeing-up of control over cultural and social events.

The Shanghai Star has been attentive to those changes in the past year and to important shifts in people's attitudes towards sex problems.

A series of stories concerning the beauty business (pages 4-6, Oct 30-Nov 5, written by Pan Haixia and Xu Xiaomin), "one-night stands" (page 5, Jun 19-25, written by Zhang Kun), campus sex (pages 6-7, Jun 19-25, written by Lu Chang) and discussions about chastity and the permanence of relationships (pages 4-6, Dec 4-10, co-written by Lu Chang, Zhang Kun and Pan Haixia) have appeared in the paper.

The changes in attitudes to sex in China have been an unprecedentedly hot topic since June when an Internet sex writer named Muzimei wrote about her sexual experiences in detail in her online diary.

Muzimei gained her fame, for good or ill, overnight. She referred to men who had had one-night stands with her by their real names, which earned her a lot of condemnation.

Sex has gone from being a forbidden topic to a free and interesting matter of discussion among the younger generation.

Actually, Muzimei was only a reflection of all the sex problems that had been pent up before the opening-up policy began to take effect in the country.

The increasing number of people sticking to a single lifestyle as well as those entering into late marriages has made the gap between sexual maturity and married life wider. A large number of urban youth suffer long years of sexual hunger. On the other hand, the traditional code of remaining a virgin until marriage has less and less meaning to the rising generation.

The increasing popularity of the Internet, in some respects, has made casual love affairs much easier to enter into.

More than 30 per cent of one-night-stand sexual encounters in China are arranged through the Internet, according to a leading Chinese portal.

However, orgies and promiscuity will not become mainstream practices.

"Young people are eager to copy the conduct of Westerners, but they don't realize these kind of practices are not dominant there either," said Liu Dalin, a sexologist.

When universities were trying to protect the purity of their "ivory towers,"- which meant no sex on campus - physically mature college students were not willing to forgo the opportunity to obtain sexual happiness.

Some schools wanted to pretend to be blind to the drastic changes occurring, even though condom machines had been installed on campus. And more and more students were choosing to rent housing off campus to have a freer life.

The regulations requiring college students not to start love relationships while in college and not to kiss in public on campus have never looked so out of place.