China’s Cracked Closet

The Globe, August 1, 2005, Beijing

To the casual observer, Yu Qiang leads a fairly mundane life. The 26-year-old from Kunming has a nondescript short haircut and dresses in T-shirts and jeans. When he entertains guests, he treats them with perfect courtesy, pouring tea and making pleasant conversation. Everything seems peaceful on the outside. But Yu has a secret. He’s gay. And in today’s China, that’s still cause for turmoil. Yu is afraid to tell his parents, for fear of being disowned. He is afraid to tell his employer, for fear of being fired. He is even afraid to share his real name. Only four or five other "brothers," as Yu calls them, know about his homosexuality. "We are still living in the closet," he told the Chinese magazine The Globe. "We cannot see the light."

But there is a glimmer of hope. That Yu’s tale was even told is remarkable in a country where talk of homosexuality remains firmly behind closed doors. The biweekly glossy is published by China’s state-owned Xinhua news agency, whose more well-known wire service typically does little but regurgitate the official party line. Yet The Globe, which boasts 500,000 readers, devoted 10 pages of its August 1 issue to the cover, "30 Million: The Troubles of China’s Homosexuals." Along with the sympathetic profile of Yu, the cover package also includes a more standard sociological treatment of the subject, quoting psychologists and university researchers on the problems facing gays in China.

Attitudes toward sexual orientation appear to be changing. Indeed, Zhang Beichuan, a sociology professor at Qingdao University, offers a suggestion to the government in the magazine’s pages. "We have special laws to protect our women and children." he says. "Homosexuals, as a huge group, should be able to enjoy the same equal rights."

The Globe’s coverage of homosexuality is no small step in what remains a deeply conservative culture (something that’s often lost in gushing foreign press coverage about China’s rapid economic growth, foreign investment, and cool Shanghai). Coming out of the closet is hardly considered easy in the United States and Europe; in China, it is a journey fraught with arguably much more angst. According to Zhang’s research, 30 to 35 percent of gay men contemplate suicide. Up to 13 percent make a serious attempt.

Astonishingly, nearly 80 percent of the homosexual male population is either married or intends to marry women. The reason is all too understandable. As Yu tells The Globe, not getting married and not having a child in China is an unthinkable affront to parents, the most disobedient thing a son or daughter could ever do. That’s why he laughs nervously and desperately changes the subject whenever his parents talk about marriage. Yu can’t bear to tell them the truth.

It is against this social backdrop that the Chinese government has recently begun to make changes that remove the stigma from being gay. It was only in 1997 that China’s criminal code stopped defining homosexual acts as a form of "sexual harassment" subject to prosecution. Just five years ago, the central government’s healthcare regulations stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental disease. In late 2004, China TV, the largest state-owned TV station, devoted time on its evening broadcast to a report called, "Face it, don’t avoid it." It was the first time that the Chinese government — through the media — openly addressed the issue of homosexuality. Last September, Shanghai’s prestigious Fudan University began offering a class in its sociology department about the health, legal, and social issues related to homosexuality. And in early February, gay writer Tong Ge released a report called "MSM (men having sex with men) in China: Surveying Sex and Self-Identity," a two-year survey of 400 gay men, asking them about their sexual activities, experiences, and desires.

Why this shift in public thinking? The first reason is undoubtedly the mounting AIDS crisis. Nongovernmental organizations estimate that there are more than 1 million HIV/AIDS cases in China, and the United Nations warns that the figure could hit 10 million by 2010, unless the government steps up efforts to halt the disease. The Globe claims that there are 30 million gay people in China (which, at only 2.3 percent of the total population, is likely a conservative estimate), slightly less than the entire population of Canada. The government can no longer keep its head in the sand about the threat of unprotected sex in such significant numbers.

The other reason for China’s growing recognition of its gay population is simply modernity. A policy that criminalizes homosexual behavior is not the norm in developed nations, and China, more than anything, wants to take what it sees as its rightful place among the leading nations of the world. Young Chinese also have much more of a live-and-let-live attitude toward homosexuality than previous generations. Gay bars abound in Shanghai and Beijing. Hip urbanites who watch pirated DVDs of Sex and the City think it’s cool to have a gay friend, just like Carrie and Charlotte do. And then there’s the Internet. According to The Globe, the Web portal ChinaBBS.com hosts more than 50 gay forums where China’s homosexuals can open their hearts online. Although the Chinese government strictly monitors and censors Internet content, it has turned a blind eye to these gay-themed message boards. Indeed, Yu speaks quite affectingly about how important the online community is, and how it allows him, in an otherwise lonely and secretive life, to speak openly and make friendships with other like-minded souls. "Here [on the Internet] anyone in the group can show a ‘true face’ to others — releasing the pressure, opening the heart — and not feel lonely anymore," Yu told The Globe.

Does all this progress mean that China is about to experience a wave of gay pride? Probably not. In December, the government shut down Beijing’s first gay and lesbian cultural festival. Plainclothes police ripped down signs and decorations for the event, and filmed those attending the festival. Human Rights Watch called it "an effort to drive China’s gay and lesbian communities underground and to silence open discussions about sexuality throughout the country." The government may have opened the closet door, but it’s still a little too scary to come out.