GUANGZHOU (AFP) ― A Japanese porn star prepares for a performance in her dressing room, unruffled by furious arguments outside among impatient Chinese fans eagerly anticipating her show.

Rei Mizuna was in China to corner her share of its money-spinning sex product market.

“Everyone is so passionate and I’m really happy,” the diminutive porn star told AFP as heated exchanges took place outside. “I really didn’t think there would be this much excitement.”

The rowdy scene at the Guangzhou National Sex Culture Festival was a graphic illustration of how sexual taboos are loosening in the once deeply conservative country ― and the opportunities for those able to exploit it.

China is estimated to make more than 80 percent of the world’s sex toys, with 1 million people employed in the industry, but an increasing proportion of the products are staying in the country to feed domestic demand.

An adventurous generation of young, mainly urban Chinese are pushing back the frontiers of what is accepted, adopting attitudes far removed from the puritan days of radical Communist rule their parents lived under.

Pornographic videos are banned in China, but softer varieties and the wider sex product industry is booming.

At the fair earlier this month hundreds of sex doll makers, condom companies and vibrator distributors vied for the attention of hundreds of thousands of visitors.

At one end of the giant exhibition hall, a transsexual model performed an outlandishly lewd act with a vibrator, occasionally departing from the stage to meet the audience.

Elsewhere electronic gadgets emitted shrieks of sexual rapture while younger men barged their way through tiny, crowded booths, sifting through rows of outfits for nurses, French maids and policewomen, and huge bins full of ladies briefs as if seeking out ripe apples at a fruit market.

Sexual inhibitions are left at the door of the annual event, along with sexual partners for all but a few of the largely male visitors.

“We just came here to have a look around,” said one young man, clutching bags of women’s clothes, small tubs of cream and a huge supply of free condoms.

He was among a hundreds-strong crush of people who waited for more than three hours to see Mizuna take the stage, handing out condoms and letting one lucky admirer peck her on the cheek.

Japanese porn stars ― who are known as AV (Adult Video) Girls in Asia ― routinely perform song and dance routines in China in a bid to sell their softer videos and raise their profiles as mainstream entertainers.

They are wildly popular among Chinese men, particularly on China’s microblogging websites. AV Girl Sora Aoi has almost 15 million followers on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.

More than 2,000 sex shops have been set up in each of Beijing and Shanghai since laws were relaxed in 1993, according to state-run media, and the market for sex toys is growing at 63 percent a year.

“Our industry has changed a lot,” said Cheng Zichuan, owner of Hitdoll, one of China’s top sex doll manufacturers.