Thanks to Danwei and People’s Daily, yesterday I was able to connect the dots and integrate most of the major China stories of the day — in my twisted mind, at least.

First I read a linked People’s Daily article, which to me represents all those doom and gloom/bad economy stories. This particular one said that up to 4 million unfortunate souls could lose their jobs in China in 2009.

Then I saw the next helpful Danwei link to People’s Daily, this one about all the porn sites that have been closed over the past few days – almost 100 now.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if millions of people get thrown out of work and are pissed off, the last thing you want to do is take away their porn. This is basic governance, folks; you don’t need a degree from Georgetown University to understand the concept. And before you suggest that these guys just don’t understand this sort of thing, don’t bother finishing that thought. Bureaucrats know porn – it’s a universal thing.

Whenever the economy is crappy, who does well? The movie industry (Hollywood is doing quite OK these days, by the way). In today’s digital age, we have to throw in gaming/online gaming, another industry rolling along nicely, particularly here in China.

I have to assume that at least parts of the porn industry remain robust during a recession – maybe the cheaper products/services as opposed to the higher-end, Eliot Spitzer-type forms of entertainment. In fact, I dimly recall that in grad school economics they taught us that there is a positive correlation between the value of the second derivative of the porn function (i.e., f”(porn)) and, depending on where the economy is on the Phillips Curve, the rate of unemployment. If my memory serves me, the math was a bit tricky, particularly since I was taking notes with a crayon.

Suffice it to say that people who have been laid off like to watch video of others getting laid. As the economy improves and workers have more disposable income, consumer porn choices shift — although note that prices do not immediately respond (porn prices are sticky, naturally).

Now, we all want unemployed people to find jobs as quickly as possible. However, sometimes folks just need some time to sit out the rough spots of the economy and wait for things to pick up again. In the meantime, you gotta have something to do. There are just so many movies to see, and even the most caffeine-addled brain needs a rest from grinding away on WoW. Porn is the obvious answer, isn’t it?

Unless the government’s fiscal stimulus package is magically tripled in size overnight, we better come up with a way to keep people busy. Without the porn, there’s going to be trouble.

On the other magical qualities of porn, read this.