NewsChina's queer influencers thrive despite growing LGBTQ+ censorship

China’s queer influencers thrive despite growing LGBTQ+ censorship

TAIPEI, Taiwan —  Amid China’s crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights, queer influencers are using creative strategies, subtle hashtags and coded language to stay one step ahead of social media censors and provide much-needed support to the community.

A decade ago, LGBTQ+ communities were gaining greater visibility and acceptance in China’s traditionally conservative society. That tide has turned under President Xi Jinping, whose government is tightening controls on Pride events, restricting queer representation on TV and pressuring internet sites and platforms to scrub LGBTQ-friendly content.

For the record:

7:53 a.m. Nov. 14, 2024An earlier version of this story misspelled Wen Jianghan’s name as Wen Jiahan.

In one chat group for gay kids and their parents, a distressed young man recently confided he had not heard from his mother since coming out to her a month earlier.

“Don’t worry,” replied another user on Xiaohongshu, a Chinese photo and video sharing app similar to Instagram. “Give her some time to digest. This is normal.”

The next day, the creator of the chat group interrupted with a sudden warning: Someone had reported the group for violating platform rules.

It was unclear who flagged the group and why. Xiaohongshu prohibits content that “disrupts social order,” “undermines social stability” or “violates public order and morals.”

Two men walk in a square, with a cruise ship and a building in the background

Willy, 40, left, who is from Taiwan, and Louis, 37, of Kunming take a stroll in Shenzhen, in southern China, on Dec. 16, 2023. They met through a dating app and like to travel. Theirs is a cross-strait love story that places them on opposite sides of one of the 21st century’s tensest tinderboxes.

(Hector Retamal / Getty Images)

Shi Zhujiao, the group’s host, dashed out a link to a new channel. “This chat could disappear at any time,” she wrote.

Queer influencers have become one of the remaining bastions of LGBTQ+ representation on the Chinese internet. They walk a fine line between supporting queer expression and advocating for LGBTQ+ rights. The latter could land them in the government’s crosshairs.

“Of course I worry about being banned. It hasn’t been easy, running this account for two years,” Shi, 59, said in an interview. Content creators are accustomed to such uncertainty, she added, because government directives tend to be vague and unevenly enforced. “No one knows where the line actually is.”

After her daughter Teddy came out to her in 2018, Shi started volunteering at Trueself, an LGBTQ+ nonprofit in China, answering calls from troubled queer children and their families. A few years later, she created her own social media channel, where she shares with the more than 8,500 followers her own difficult process of accepting her daughter’s sexual orientation.

“I just thought talking to people one-on-one was too slow,” she said.

Public space and support for LGBTQ+ communities are narrowing in China.

ShanghaiPRIDE, which started hosting LGBTQ+ events in 2009,

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