How LGBTQ Life in China Has Gotten Tougher Under Xi

(Bloomberg) -- China’s LGBTQ community has long had to deal with not only societal prejudice but also pressure from the state: censorship, surveillance and intimidation, at times even detention by police. During the early 2000s, though, it looked like things might be changing. Gay clubs flourished in big cities and community groups sprang up to offer social services. These days, the feeling has faded. While it’s difficult to point to any direct crackdown, the reality is that over the past decade it’s become tougher to be gay in China. That’s seen as a consequence of a broader push by President Xi Jinping to mold a more conservative, conformist China. 

1. What’s the legal situation? 

Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1997, but there are no explicit legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Same-sex couples are not allowed to marry or adopt children. Advocates have had some successes in court arguing that the rights to equality and dignity in the constitution apply to LGBTQ people, like when a Beijing court in 2020 ruled that protecting a transwoman against workplace discrimination “should be within the meaning” of the law. The Chinese Psychiatric Association removed homesexuality per se from its list of mental illnesses in 2001, calling it “not necessarily abnormal.” Still, a 2020 report from the United Nations human rights office found so-called conversion therapies still being provided at public hospitals. People living with HIV/AIDS or those seeking sex-reassignment surgery have reported facing discrimination from healthcare workers.

2. How hard is it to be out?

It can depend on where and, to some extent, how old you are. The country’s most populous cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, tend to be among the most progressive, and that’s true when it comes to sexuality. The gay club Destination, which opened in Beijing in 2004, was one of the biggest gay nightclubs in Asia and also offered services such as HIV testing as well. Like elsewhere, in China younger people tend to be more comfortable discussing their sexuality than older ones. But in the conservative heartland -- home to the vast bulk of the nation’s 1.4 billion people -- it remains the norm for gay men and women to bow to family pressure to marry someone of the opposite sex and have children, keeping their true sexual orientation secret.  

3. What’s happened over the last decade?

In 2016 Chinese censors said films and television should avoid gay themes or characters. Nine activists who tried to organize a gay rights conference in Xi’an in 2017 were briefly detained; one of them told a reporter the police said the city didn’t welcome gay people. Last year regulators used the word “niangpao,” which roughly translates to “sissy men,” to warn media companies off employing actors who don’t conform to gender norms. Though the rules don’t mention sexual orientation specifically, the use of a slur in official communication set off alarm bells for gay people. The social media platform WeChat deleted the accounts of LGBTQ associations at some of the nation’s leading universities, including Tsinghua and Peking, saying only that they violated unspecified rules. The hit American television show “Friends” started streaming again in February in China, but the plot line about Ross’ lesbian ex-wife was censored.

4. Is all of this Xi’s doing?

Not directly. Probably the most visible effect since he came to power has been a tightening of breathing space for civil society, including groups serving the LGBTQ community. As described in a report by Holly Snape, a China scholar at the University of Glasgow, a policy introduced in 2021 makes it difficult for unapproved groups to survive, for example by banning media coverage and cutting them off from public meeting spaces or banking services. Darius Longarino, a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, says that backlash, after decades of grassroots community building, is “squeezing down the spaces through which LGBTQ people have found allies and each other.” That said, there are still less public pockets of the community that are thriving — a plethora of Chinese dating apps such as Blued are still widely available, allowing millions of people to connect.

5. What’s motivating him?

One of Xi’s top priorities has been to make China a great power on the world stage. Toward that end have come policies that aim to build a more assertive, self-reliant nation with a strong, robust population. Rising tensions with the U.S. have fed a more nationalist tone. Being gay, bisexual or trans is seen by some in China as an imported concept — a misconception that draws on the fact that many Western embassies in Beijing have highlighted gay rights. These days, few local advocacy groups dare to attend foreign-sponsored events on such themes, at least not officially. The Communist Party also has been pushing for families to have more children, an effort to reverse the effects of the old one-child policy, which has led to a quickly graying society. Nurturing LGBT rights and normalizing non-traditional family structures could be seen as undermining that goal, although it’s never said outright.

The Reference Shelf

• “Being LGBTI in China,” a survey by the UN Development Program, and a UN human rights office report on conversion therapy.
• A BMC Public Health study on HIV-related stigma in China.
• “Cultivate Aridity and Deprive them of Air,” a report by Holly Snape at the University of Glasgow on China’s handling of grassroots organizations.
• “Precarious Progress: Advocacy for the Human Rights of LGBT People in China,” a report by Darius Longarino, Research Scholar at Yale Law School.
• “All in My Family,” a short documentary by Hao Wu on how he introduced his same-sex partner and children to his traditional family in China.
• Bloomberg Opinion’s Tim Culpan on China’s push for conformity.
• The U.S. State Department’s 2021 human rights report on China.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

With assistance from Bloomberg