Five held over sex video shot at Beijing clothing store

People gather in front of a clothes store in Beijing. Chinese Communist authorities have said the distribution of a sex tape purportedly shot in a fitting room in one of Beijing's trendiest shopping malls is "against socialist core values", after the footage went viral.

BEIJING: Chinese police have detained five people, including a young couple, over a sex tape shot in a Beijing clothing store which went viral in China.

Those detained include the couple suspected of shooting the video – showing a mostly clothed man and a naked woman apparently having sex – in the changing room of a Uniqlo store in the capital.

The clip rapidly spread on China's Twitter-like Weibo and mobile messaging service WeChat, with scores of people taking selfies outside the outlet, some mimicking the poses seen in the footage.

Police held the couple last Wednesday night, just hours after the footage went viral.

"Five people were taken away by the police, including the man and woman who played the main role," said the state-run Beijing Television.

"The police investigation has two main parts: Who published this unsavoury video, and was it an example of hype by the business."

The Cyberspace Administration of China said that distributing the footage was "against socialist core values". It ordered senior managers of Weibo's operator Sina and Tencent, owner of WeChat, to cooperate in an investigation. – AFP