Visitors look at a life-size sex doll on display during the fourth Guangzhou Sex Culture Expo in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, November 4, 2006. The expo is designed to promote general sex awareness, knowledge, and academic discussion and co-operation in sex studies. [Li Xiaomeng/New Express]

BEIJING -- Encouraged by the success of the fourth Guangzhou Sex Culture Expo, held earlier this month, family planning officials from Liaoning, Beijing and Shanghai have promised to follow suit.

Visitors watch models wearing sexy underwear strut down the catwalk during the fourth Guangzhou Sex Culture Expo in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, November 4, 2006. The expo is designed to promote general sex awareness, knowledge, and academic discussion and co-operation in sex studies. [Li Xiaomeng/New Express]

Altogether 500,000 visitors visited the expo from November 4-6, ten times the number for the first such event in 2003.

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An official with the State Population and Family Planning Commission heralded the expo as an opportunity for the general public to learn about sex, health and science.

Population and family planning officials from Liaoning, Beijing and Shanghai attending a symposium on population in Beijing, said they would travel to Guangdong to visit the fair. They hope to sponsor similar sex fairs in their own areas next year.

Foreign participants attending the symposium said the fourth Guangzhou sex fair helps promote sexual awareness and a code of sexual conduct.

"The fair reflects the development of Chinese society and is laudable," they said.

Beijing and Shanghai had planned to organize sex expos in the past but the events were called off because of negative publicity.

Though Chinese attitudes towards sex have become more liberal in recent decades, many people are still conservative about sex.

When the fourth Guangzhou sex culture expo opened on November 4, some netizens dismissed it as "morally decadent" or a "legalized sex show".

"Culture is simply a cloak for a sexual display," said one netizen.

"Why do we have to mimic westerners with their obsession about sex," said another netizen, "conservative attitudes about sex are fitting and proper for Asian people and part of the graciousness of oriental life".

Zhu Jiaming, from the China Sexology Society, denied that sex culture festivals were vulgar and said that such opinions were backward.

"Sex is an objective reality for all human beings. We have to stay up with the times," said Zhu.