Radio Free Asia reported that
lmao
If this is even actually happening, I suspect it has more to do with China's pornography laws (which amount to a blanket ban on creating any such work) than homophobia.
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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Article does indeed say
China last updated its laws on "digitally obscene" content in 2010.
Those regulations said the "production, reproduction, publication, trafficking, dissemination" of any obscene works that generate more than 5,000 clicks online, or that make profits of more than 5,000 yuan ($1,072), should be treated as a crime.
It's not immediately clear from the article if the works in question are 18+ or are just treated as obscene for being gay.
Not to affirm what the article says – I'm not in the right mental space to investigate and I don't want to speak without investigation – but the article does not try to pretend that the blanket ban doesn't exist. Would it be the first time in history when extra scrutiny is applied to anything that has to do with queer people?
it was only a few months ago that people downloaded redbook, a chinese social media app filled with gay people kissing each other in the frontpage
i don't disbelieve that there's a blanket ban on lgbtq issues in China, in the same sense that anti porn laws are applied selectively in Japan and that a similar social conservative streak dominates in India. but given that the main source for this issue is RFA then i'm gonna err on the side of caution. which is to not assume that there's a repeat of the chechnya concentration camps situation
I lived in China and went to gay clubs lol so concentration camps is definitely not what I had in mind. But then again, there was a time when you could see gay people kissing each other on the front page in Russian social media apps and that time was not so long ago.
It is possible. Given that RFA is reporting on it, it is not probable.
Now that's just cope. Understanding that Radio Free InsertYourRegion doesn't care about queer people and abuses queer stories to destabilise/dehumanise whoever they are ordered to is one thing, saying that queerphobia doesn't exist because they reported on it is another. Radio Free Europe reported on gay purges in Chechnya, did they not happpen?
Having only the information that the US government said it is happening we can safely assume it didn't. They probably accidentally report true things sometimes but that would be an outlier if so.
Oh, well, I guess if you've never talked to a single queer person from Russia or Chechnya you can safely assume anything you would like to be true. And this attitude is exactly why I made my initial comment too.
I'll doubble down. I have no doubt a thing like that has happened. However I would bet money that the RFA reporting on that incident is meaningfully different enough as to make any attempt at analyzing meaning from it misleading and useless.
I'm struggling to understand your second sentence, sorry. Is it that it might have happened but we shouldn't use RFA as a source for trying to analyse/understand it?
He's doubting RFA's reporting, not that China has never committed a human rights violation.
If your question is "how can we, the West, analyze and critique this" then the answer is that we cannot based on biased sources
I am not "the West", never been further West than Kaliningrad. I speak Chinese and I can absolutely investigate this further but, as I said in my original comment, I am not mentally prepared right now.
All I am trying to say here is this: denying an issue that might actually exist just because Western media reported on it is cope. Yes, Western media will look for the worst all the time and invent shit if they cannot find anything. No, that doesn't mean that the worst cannot happen. If you don't know, say that you don't know.
I'm saying this is impossible to properly dissect with this source. I'm not attacking you lol, I'm trying to explain the disagreement
My bad for assuming you're from "the West" though. It's a predominantly English speaking forum so that's the baseline I was working with
Sorry, I didn't mean to sound so hostile/defensive. I understand why you assumed I would be American like most users on this website. It just happened so many times at this point – sometimes with people lecturing me on the country I live/lived in lol – that it got a bit old.
It's fair.
Jumping to assume the most nefarious possible motive based on a western propaganda outlet is silly.
Nobody has said it is impossible that China has engaged in persecution of LGBTQIA+ people. But we have pointed out assuming this is an example of discrimination, based on a piece of propaganda, from an outlet with the mission to make China look as bad as possible, without anything close to independent corroboration, is foolish.
I don't think it's silly to "jump" to queerphobia as an explanation for these arrests, based on my experience living in China and what I know of queer history around the world. I think it's silly to dismiss this explanation based on the news source though, and dismissing is what some people in this thread are trying to do.
All I know is if you assume the opposite of whatever the US State Department or it's affiliated media outlets says, you will be right more often than not.
State Department says "Evil SeeSeePee hates the gays and so they arrested a bunch of them" - I will assume the opposite until and unless credible reporting comes out to corroborate the propaganda outlets claims.
I think this is just as reactionary as lib Marvel movie thinking, just in the other direction.
Unfortunately I agree with the person you are talking to here. You have to start at a baseline, and there is no such thing as 'true neutrality'. You are overall better off when doing a media investigation assuming that any apparatus of the U.S. media arm has misrepresented any given story, particularly when it comes to reporting about China and Chinese law and punishment. Doesn't mean it's always the correct position to take sans research, but it isn't a reactionary position for me because it comes from years of doing this kind of media backtracking. It's mostly pragmatism at this point, as they can spew lies faster than I can investigate them.
It is applied as a general rule of thumb, but also specifically in this context.
Edit: Not to contradict your experience at all though, There is plenty of queerphobia in China, as you and plenty of others I have talked to on the subject have said. It wouldn't be surprising if there was some sort of crackdown on slash-fics, but how widespread is it, is it actually a national mandate (is it 'China' or just some specific regional politicians bugaboo), is it targeting specifically queer artists or just obscenity in general, these are the kinds of questions I wouldn't put it past RFA to completely and purposefully underreport.
I think not trusting any bourgeois media outlet as a baseline is the correct position. You added an extra bit about pragmatism in the edit and it's a very good point as well, there is not enough time and otherwise capacity to investigate everything.
However, complete dismissal of the content on a public forum under a post in which the OP asked the forum to help them understand the content is where it becomes reactionary. This is no longer the individual "I don't have time for this so I will not engage", this is now collective content in and of itself. And in this content, 10 different people are telling me that RFA is an unreliable source – like I didn't know lol – while nobody is addressing my original point. This is what hexbear as a whole has to say about this topic and I am sorry but this is reactionary.
I don't think most people here would disagree with the sentiment of not trusting bourgeois news sources in general. This issue is that pretty much all the news we get, especially from China, is from bourgeois sources, either inside or outside of China.
In that case the difference between 'reactionary' politics and 'materialist' politics is essentially one of clarity of explanation. Which I am not necessarily disagreeing with, as I think Mao discusses that issue in 'combatting liberalism', just thinking in post.
My point is that I would guarantee that pretty much everyone here is very likely operating under something very close to my logic as it is logic generated by the experience of being a terminally online Western leftist. They just aren't generally as charitable in expressing it as I am.
In my personal understanding, the longstanding 'hexbear' (not to place words in people's mouths, but this was the sentiment in r/chapotraphouse back on reddit in like 2019) opinion is that the actual truth value of the article is irrelevant, especially if you live in the West. The point is not to raise awareness to help queer people in China, it is to manufacture consent for whatever strange foreign policy tact the government is hoping to pull. Therefore, no further investigation is even necessarily warranted. We know where it is comes from, we know why it is coming from there, what else would you have us do, does awareness of the truth even matter for us? So people just shit-post and tell others to ignore it. And you are correct, that might be a reactionary thing to do, but it has been inherent to the posting culture of these people since before hexbear was even around.
Thank you, this was genuinely insightful and I did not know this about hexbear culture at all, which caused several similar clashes already. I guess I'll just stick to trans mega then because this is not for me and I think it's pretty uncool to think this way even.
Absolutely. You are welcome.
You are more than welcome anywhere here, but there is absolutely a dominant posting culture outside the trans mega that was developed specifically to combat online Western liberal brain worms, which it is very, very good at. Posting combat is not about being excruciatingly specific and correct, it is about dunking as hard, and fast, as possible, with overwhelming force.
'Chapo-posting' shone brightest when we were essentially predators, singling out bad takes from the packs of redditors, striking fear into their hearts through things like the n-word bot. This is a reduced, if still mildly effective form.
Unfortunately, like any vestigial organ, while it occasionally has it's uses for the wandering liberal/fascist, it more often than not causes friendly fire these days. That said, it would be a shame to lose it entirely, like killing the last white rhino, and it was fighting a losing battle so I stopped advocating for less dunks on fellow posters years ago. Gotta treat a forum like a forum, no matter the forum.
Glad to be of service.
I think uncritically swallowing US propaganda without any additional research makes you a convenient lapdog of the empire.
Edit. This is harsh and I have edited my comment. Regardless. I will not assume homophobic intent based souly on a single propaganda piece. If actual evidence of maliciousness exists I am happy to take it into consideration; but if Voice of America said the sky is blue I would look out a window to confirm.
I think I am doing the opposite of uncritically swallowing anything. I said I'm not going to investigate and what I meant is that I'm not going to write an effortpost after multiple days of research. I, of course, did do the bare minimum of checking that other news outlets are also posting about this and these arrests are indeed happening before saying anything.
Now, about phobic intent. This is exactly what my very-very first comment was about! I am queer and I know a lot about queer history. I know it happens very often that there is some rule that technically applies to everyone but is applied much more strictly when it comes to queer people. I know cishet people always say this isn't happening. This is why, if Xi himself called me right now and said that they have no such intent, I would struggle to believe him. And this is what I was trying to point out. Unfortunately, nobody engaged with this point and instead everyone is trying to prove that I am an RFA koolaid drinker, and I think this is reactionary.
P.S. Your initial comment was alright, I've heard worse towards me here <3
Yes. I am saying the reporting of RFA is specifically removed from context to the extent that if they have a story about a true event reading it will likely lead you to an incorrect conclusion. So in effect any story you see there is fake.
I'm not in the right mental space to investigate and I don't want to speak without investigation
I am addressing the general idea that "if Radio Free Something reported on this, it is not true". I can speak on this because I have experience with this and the example I give towards the end of my comment comes from this experience.
P.S. To be absolutely clear, I also have experience with queerphobia in China because my transition began while I lived there but this I specifically avoided talking about because I didn't want to give more credence to the article in the OP.
That would be beyond the scope of my knowledge, I'm afraid.
china's strict anti-porn laws have come up before, usually in the context of "distribution" being defined before the internet was widespread. idk anything about the alleged incident but if RFA is the only source then it's so distorted from what actually happened that we can have no idea.
western outlet writing about china
don't make me tap the sign
This section caught my attention:
spoiler
On Chinese social media, people have accused police of "offshore fishing" — a phrase that refers to local police who have allegedly summoned suspects from other parts of the country for questioning for financial gain.
The phrase "offshore fishing" was censored last week on social media platforms in China, including Weibo and WeChat. [how do they confirm if specific words or phrases are actually banned? They don't specify in this article]
Haitang, the website popular with fans of boys love fiction, has also been suspended until July 8.
A spokesperson for Haitang said they were working on improving their services.
I will also note that they mention China's obscenity laws, but don't mention much about the content of the summoned authors' works, other than the homosexual nature of the content. I'm not a fan of obscenity laws as a concept, but the whole article frames the gay content as the focal point (calling it a "widespread crackdown on the 'boys love' genre in China," for example) when that may not even be what's causing the issue.
Sections like "the scale of action has been widespread, with estimates that at least 100 writers have been affected," also make me wonder, is this an exceptionally small genre? Because if it's really a genre-based crackdown, I'd think China would have considerably more than a few hundred people, even for the tiniest genre.
Again, I'm no supporter of obscenity laws, and I prize creative freedom in a society, but this seems like a re-framing of obscenity charges as an anti-gay crackdown.
ahhh ok more nuanced but still shit. personally I can't wait for China to shake off the rusty chains of social conservatism and adopt Cuba's family code or their own version of it.
plus it will fuck with the ACP nazbol types and technofeudalists that think China is some kind of model anti-woke hyper productive state