While China has robust enough LGBT social networks, independent gay politics are firmly discouraged, according to James West in August’s DNA magazine.

The Beijing Gay and Lesbian Alliance found this out when it encountered the authorities closure of the Beijing Gay and Lesbian Culture Festival shortly before the Olympics. While Beijing’s Destination club has reopened, and is still pumping, the atmosphere seems to be one of ‘repressive tolerance’- this far, and no further.

Chinese lesbians and gay men are known as tongzi, and this term (Cantonese: comrades) is believed to have been coined at a Hong Kong lesbian and gay film festival in 1989. Will the Chinese authorities ever let LGBT culture mainstream, or will lesbian and gay identities continue to be privatised, recreational and primarily social in context? Unfortunately, despite valiant pressure from independent LGBT groups like the Beijing Gay and Lesbian Alliance and Common Language, the governing Communist Party of China doesn’t look as if it’s about to pass anti-discrimination laws, let alone relationship and family equality laws, any time soon. 

Recommended:

James West: “The Bamboo Closet” DNA 103 (August 2008): 26-27: http://www.dnamagazine.com.au