More power to Ms Li. You can't have too many voices advocating a saner, more grown-up public discourse, and of course she's spot on about privacy.

quoting the above:

"Have you participated in wife-swapping / swinging activities?
3% of women and 3% of men said yes...This shows that the law about group sexual activities is behind the times and needs to be reformed."

i'm all for getting freaky with another man's wife (especially if she keeps her cop uniform on) ... but isn't the above statement somewhat absurd? is she honestly suggesting that a 3% non-compliance rate with a statute is indication that the law at issue is out of date and in need of reform?

have not 3% or more of the population thieved; caused serious phsyical injury to another party; abused their children, etc? but does that mean that laws prohibiting such activities are "behind the times", "out of date", or otherwise "useless"?

were li yinhe a man, i'd accuse her of thinking with her dick.

That's not the thrust (ho ho) of her argument though, is it? She's saying that because the incidence of the behaviour is similar to liberal democracies where the law takes no view on the matter, Chinese legislation should likewise be reformed. The actual percentage is neither here nor there.

"This shows how far behind the times the law is"
The vagueness of this statement shows how easily experts can misjudge their readers' familiarity with the topic. I'm guessing that people more familiar with her work know exactly what she means by this, but I don't...

I just went over to her blog and read the full statement. Where the ... appears above, there is the statement that "twenty years ago, violation of the group sex law was punishable by death. This ratio shows the sea change that is taking place among the population."
I think that she's making the case for more liberal laws, though the statement that 3% participation shows this law to be obsolete is still rather vague...

While the data is interesting, anyone who has ever actually worked with survey statistics knows these'conclusions' have nothing to do with the data, they are only surface level correleations of things that 'appear' to possibly be related, but that do not demonstrate causal proof in any way at all. These interpretations should be taken as an expression of opinion, not scientific fact. Much more rigorous methods would have to be employed before a single one of these correlations could be considered proven.

She's just doing what every other politically minded person does, which is using statistics to provide legitimacy for her viewpoints, which are that certain sex laws should be liberalized. I agree with her there, and was thus saddened to read that pressure on her leaders from an unstated source means that she will "shut her mouth" in future.

http://news.qq.com/a/20070209/001789.htm

Quoting Jim: "the behaviour is similar to liberal democracies where the law takes no view on the matter"

I don't know which liberal democracy this statment refers to, but the USA has all kinds of laws on these sorts of matters. Many states have laws against sodomy (dated from early 20th cent), prostitution is illegal in all states, and not to mention all the states wanting to ban gay marriage. I don't think such legislatures are issues of the political system, but more of a reflection of the society. Despite all the claims, Chinese people are still relatively conservative when it comes to sex.