China’s vast security operation to ensure the smooth running of celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule is starting to fray.

After a week of holidays to mark the October 1 festivity, signs of normality began to return to the streets of Beijing. The brothels are back.

Alleys and streets throughout the capital are still festooned with huge national flags. Almost every home has a flag, depicting five gold stars against a red background, displayed outside its front door. The bigger, the better.

But the thousands of volunteers recruited to police the celebrations are disappearing and police vigilance is wavering. The shutters have been lifted from the windows of hole-in-the-wall rooms down narrow alleys where heavily made-up girls have reappeared – sitting on sofas, combing their long hair or just gazing out at passers-by.

Police had announced with great fanfare in June the launch of a three-month crackdown on prostitution. Rising joblessness early in the year had led to an increase in gang crimes, prompting the Ministry of Public Security to create a special division to tackle organised prostitution, gambling and trafficking of women. Police targeted entertainment venues such as dance halls and nightclubs as well as beauty salons and massage parlours that operate as fronts for brothels. Police say they investigate about 140,000 cases of prostitution a year involving 250,000 prostitutes and their clients.

In a country of 1.3 billion people that marks barely a dent in an enormous industry. In almost every hotel in every city, women call guests each evening offering a massage or presenting services in even more direct language. Karaoke halls provide girls as the norm. Barber shops are well known for being a front for brothels. Many girls simply set up shop in the backstreets of Beijing, sitting in their windows backed by a glimmering pink light just a stone’s throw from the local police station.

The reappearance of these girls under the noses of the local police highlights the co-operation that exists between the two. In many cases, girls are expected to turn in a quota of their clients to police who can then either blackmail or arrest them.

A survey this year showed that prostitutes are not universally reviled in China. More than 7.9 percent of respondents to the poll by Insight China magazine said that they considered sex workers to be trustworthy, placing them above politicians and scientists. Only farmers and religious workers scored higher.

Security is still tight in parts of Beijing, with guards in camouflage stationed at bridges round-the-clock. But some are starting to doze on the job with offices due to open today and the nationwide excitement generated by the military parade through Tiananmen Square on October 1 starting to dissipate.

Three provinces also chose the occasion of the 60th anniversary to free prisoners. The San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation said it had reports that more than 500 prisoners in western Ningxia had their sentences reduced or were freed on parole and 272 were granted temporary home leave.

In southwestern Sichuan, 1,300 were given parole, had their sentences commuted or were given temporary leave. In central Henan province, 2,485 prisoners benefited. However, that fell short of the thousands of pardons granted to prisoners and war criminals on the tenth anniversary in 1959. Among them was the last emperor, Pu Yi.

Times Recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• More than 17,000 new underwater species found