38 China The Economist July 17th 2021
of gay rights is limited;seenextstory.)A re
cent issue was onsaleatabC.Itincluded
discussion of thestigmasurroundingpor
nography. Photographybookssometimes
push boundaries.Buriedinthepagesof
one at the fair werea fewscenesfromthe
Cultural Revolution,showingpeoplebeing
persecuted by acrowd.Thebook’seditor
checked them witha friendata staterun
publisher, who didnotthinktheywould
cause trouble (a fewindependentpublish
ers scoff at theabilityofcensorstospot
subtle censure). Someprintina mixtureof
Chinese and English,inpartbecausethey
hope this will deflectcriticism.Statepub
lishers have littleinterest inillustrated
books for adults.Soin 2018 AkiJiangsetup
AKIPRESS to giveherselfandfellowartists
an outlet. “Publishing through formal
channels is so hardin China,” says Ms
Jiang. “I wanted todrawfreely.”
Officials appearfinewiththat,within
limits. State publishersattendindiebook
fairs to scout fortalent.Onesuchevent,
called UNFOLD,which wasfirst heldin
Shanghai in 2018,evenreceivessubsidies
from the local districtlevelgovernment.
Officials there areeagertojazzupthede
relict industrialzonewherethefairtakes
place. Such cooperationinvolvesadded
scrutiny by censors.Missionarydoesnot
participate in UNFOLD.
Most authorsandillustratorsfeelthat
Shanghai offersamorerelaxedenviron
ment than the straitlacedcapital. Indie
publishers there, lacking the requisite
codes for sellingtheirworkinconvention
al bookstores, instead put them in the
city’s cafés andboutiques.Officialsover
look this transgression.
Independent book fairs have also
sprung up in biggerinlandcitieswherede
mand is growingamongyoung,welledu
cated inhabitants.Bookshopsareboom
ing: 4,000 openedinChinalastyear,de
spite the pandemic.Sisyphe,a bigprivate
chain, has spreadto hundredsofmalls.
Chengdu in the southwest,hometomore
bookshops andlibraries than anyother
Chinese city, subsidisesnewbookshops.
But the publiccanbea problem.Some
readers use citygovernmenthotlinesto
report on bookstheydeemunsuitablefor
circulation. OnecustomeratBananafish,a
bookshop in Shanghai,complainedthatit
was selling a magazinefromTaiwan,the
government ofwhich China loathes. In
fact, the publicationhadbeenclearedfor
sale in China. Anothercalledthehotline
about an 11page book, printed locally,
called “The Old ManandthePigeon”.Itis
unclear how theworkhadoffended.Per
haps the reader hadseensexualinnuendo
in an illustrationoftwobirds,abovea line
that read: “matingpigeons”.Localcensors
visited the shop.Buttheychuckledatthe
story. They took onecopyawaywiththem,
and left the others.nGayrightsPatriotism and
prejudice
T
ofree-thinkingusersofWeChat,a
socialmedia platform, it was a de
pressingly familiar event. Late on July 6th,
those who tried to browse accounts run by
lgbt societies at several universities in
China were greeted with messages saying
the forums, which had been used to publi
cise events such as webinars and film
nights, had been closed for violating un
specified rules. The accounts had probably
offended the government, which has little
regard for the rights of sexual minorities
and even less for freedom of speech.
In the past, such clampdowns have met
resistance. In 2018 Weibo, a Twitterlike
service, announced a threemonth cam
paign to eradicate pornographic, gay and
violent content from its services. In 2019
the platform shut down a discussion group
called Les, aimed at homosexual women. It
had 140,000 members. In both cases, on
line anger prompted Weibo to rethink. The
service conducted the cleanup, but decid
ed not to suppress content simply for be
ing gaythemed. It allowed the lesbian
group to reopen.
This time the online reaction has been
more mixed. Many socialmedia users
hailed the closure of the lgbtaccounts as a
victory for patriots. “External forces are
trying to weaken China’s competitiveness
by spreading propaganda about lgbtto re
duce China’s fertility rate,” wrote one blog
ger, gathering more than 66,000 views.Some accused lgbtgroups of trying to pro
mote a “colour revolution” in China, a ref
erence to uprisings against other autocrat
ic regimes. Hongwei Bao of Nottingham
University says popular nationalism in
China sometimes adopts the language of
the far right in the West. That includes an
tiSemitic drivel: one Weibo user with
nearly 150,000 followers described lgbt
activism as “a culture war initiated by the
Jewish elite and the white left”. The term
“white left” was coined in China a few
years ago to describe Western liberals ob
sessed with identity politics. Now it is also
used to insult Chinese who are deemed to
sound like woke Westerners.
Homosexuality has long been vilified as
foreign in China. But in the 2000s, as Chi
na grappled with rising rates of hiv/aids,
the government dialled back the bigotry. In
2001 it removed homosexuality from an of
ficial list of mental disorders. Since then,
at the un and other international forums,
it has gone further by endorsing the rights
of lgbtpeople. At least in big cities, gay
people have reported growing acceptance
of their sexuality among fellow citizens.
“The government doesn’t really care,” says
Eric Wang (not his real name), who works
for an lgbtrights organisation in main
land China. “They’ve got more important
things to do than oppress us.”
But rising antiWestern sentiment is
hampering this progress. Nationalists,
egged on by the Communist Party, have be
come even more vocal during the covid19
pandemic. They have trumpeted China’s
success in controlling the virus while
heaping scorn on the West’s fumbling re
sponse. Mr Wang says a growing number of
Chinese, even those who know gay and
transgender people, have started “believ
ing in conspiracy theories”. One is that all
lgbtgroups are funded by Westerners.
Seker Ma, a graphic designer in the east
ern city of Suzhou who was involved with
lgbtgroups during his recent time at uni
versity, says the atmosphere for gay people
in China has worsened in the past few
months. “A lot of the current wave of patri
otism takes this view: ‘Whatever the West
supports, we must oppose,’” says Mr Ma.
A worker at an lgbtrights group in
Beijing says that even some gay people
think that Western countries use lgbtis
sues to attack China. Very few such organi
sations are officially recognised as ngos—
the government views them with deep sus
picion. Most are able to operate only by
registering as youth centres or charities re
lated to hiv/aids. In the buildup to cele
brations of the party’s 100th birthday on Ju
ly 1st, officials warned leaders of such
groups to lie low. “We are very vulnerable,”
says the lgbtactivist. Now nationalism
may be posing an evengreater threat to
their work than the interference of securi
tyobsessed bureaucrats.nRising nationalism is making life
harder again for gay people in China