An Edge of Openness for Gay Chinese

China, a country notorious for shielding the media-especially Western media-and thus the people from issues of human rights, is embarking on new openness from its buried LGBT culture. Here is a quick flash of the progress of gay rights in China:

• China decriminalize sodomy in 1997 and removed homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders in 2001.


• Pictured above is Cuizi'en, said to be the first gay man to publicly come out in China. The docufilmmaker sits under a gay rights poster in his apartment in Beijing. He came out in 1990.


• In 2007, I reported on Didier Zheng, China's first openly gay talk show host. Although heavily censored, his net stream, Tongxing Xianglian (translated as "Connecting Homosexuals") ran for a full season addressing issues of HIV/AIDS and gay life in China.


• In June of this year, the first gay pride festival was held in Shanghai and the five-day Beijing Queer Film Festival was held despite previous government blocks.


• And most recently, last month approximately 50 (some reports cite up to 100) gay men in People's Park in the southern city of Guangzhou (also known as Canton) stood up in a silent protest against police sent to sweep the area of gay men. There are no reports of anyone harmed during the incident. AIDS activist Xiao Mu, who was handing out condoms and safer sex pamphlets during the August 25th push, told the AP that they-as in China's gay population-deserve to be there despite anti-gay sentiment.

China has a long history of persecuting its LGBT population, the extent of which has largely been unknown to the rest of the world. The State controls all media outlets, effectively censoring information absorbed by the Chinese people and other nations. However, controls have become more difficult in the wake of digital technology. It may be this quick, and often stealth, mode of information sharing that will eventually allow LGBT Chinese to live in the open without fear.

More About Gay Life in China:
China is the forth largest country in the world with a population of approximately 1.3 billion people. The Chinese forum portal ChinaBBS.com estimates that there could be as many as 30 million gays and lesbians living in China, although the actual number is unclear... read more

Image: Filmmaker Cuizi'en © Brent Stirton/Getty