Beijing, Jul 13 (IANS): A public debate has erupted in China after Shanghai subway bosses requested women to "dress modestly" and avoid sexual harassment.

According to China Daily, in the country's sweltering summer season, it makes sense for people to wear thin and cool clothes.

The debate over scantily clad women, however, came to the fore after the company running the Shanghai Metro posted a notice on its official microblog.

It urged female passengers to dress modestly to avoid sexual harassment while warning about the "many perverts" using the subway system, the daily said.

This set off a storm of protests on China's social networking sites as women criticised the company for apparently suggesting that they, and not the men who harassed them, were the guilty parties.

One of the women, Wang Yichen, 27, who works for a British company in Beijing, said her parents never protested about her dressing style and she abides by a rule that clothes must not be transparent.

Wang says she feels okay with shorts and miniskirts, or even low-cut dresses and her criterion is that no matter how much flesh is on show, the clothes have to be attractive.

But there are others like Kan Chunling, 55, who has always considered herself a fashion follower and the most open-minded of her peers but still finds it hard to appreciate the revealing dresses worn by young women nowadays.

"The dresses and skirts sold in shopping malls today are just so short, so short," Kan said. "I can't help worrying about the young women who wear them - don't they feel insecure when they travel on crowded buses and subway trains?"

"If not, on a purely practical level, don't they find those clothes inconvenient if they need to bend down or whatever?"

A video posted on Sohu, a Chinese web portal, Wednesday showed a woman in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, riding on a bus wearing just a swimming costume!