CHINA, NATIONAL, SOCIETY, COMMENTARY: Chinese Media and Homosexuality, a Marriage of Opportunity or Idealism?

By Lou Li

A gay university student came on the screen talking about his relationship with another young man and how he was infected with HIV/AIDS from unsafe sex.

A gay couple was interviewed about their relationship and their plans for the future.

On August 9, in a 45-minute program titled In the Name of Life, CCTV (China Central Television), China's biggest and most widely received TV station, scored big ratings talking about homosexuality. Chinese homosexuals, after being hidden in the dark for so long, are finally occupying a prominent presence on Chinese official media.

CCTV was not alone in giving a special focus to homosexuality in China. A month before, Tianjin TV aired another program on homosexuality, titled Under the Same Sky. Beijing News Radio's franchise program Life Hotlines ran live talk shows on homosexuality for three days beginning August 29. At the same time, China Newsweek, one of the three biggest news magazines in China, published a story on lesbians in China, a more mysterious group of homosexuals.

The news that Fudan University scheduled a course called Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies, the first of its kind ever offered to Chinese undergraduates, was a common headline in all newspapers across China on September 7.

Statistics show that news about homosexuality popped up on Chinese websites almost every day in 2005, which was certainly not the case only a year before.

Thus, some conclude that 2005 was a turning point in Chinese media's attitudes toward homosexuality, marking the end of the invisibility of homosexuals in China. The epochal fact that homosexuality is gaining tolerance and understanding gradually in Chinese society can be distinctly tracked through the voice of media.

CCTV's program In the Name of Life took many people by surprise when it aired and soon created a huge stir all over China.

"In the past, this topic was surely locked in the forbidden zone--and minefield--of Chinese media," said an editor with a government newspaper.

Xiao Li, a reporter, was sorry that he missed the broadcast time of the program. But he said that it wasn't the content of the program that was so important. "That a program on this issue can be broadcast on a state-owned national TV station is the biggest news." He that that his reporting on China's first film festival featuring homosexuality in 2001 was "killed" immediately by senior editors due to the "sensitiveness" of the topic.

Professor Zhang Beichuan with the medical school of Qingdao University, who gives his professional opinion on CCTV's program, said that CCTV actually produced a program on the same topic as early as 2002. But under the social environment then, it was not allowed to be shown to the masses.

The number of homosexuals in China remains unclear. From one source, the number of homosexuals is between 360,000 and 480,000. The World Health Organization has confirmed that homosexuality is a natural preference shared by a minority of people. But in China, it has long been a sensitive and taboo topic, hard for the mainstream society to understand.

Since it was a traditional obligation in China to bring children into the family, homosexuality was considered a threat not only to families but also to society.

Though there are no laws against homosexuality in China, Chinese homosexual life has existed solely underground for many years. Media, who are supposed to take the responsibility of reporting the real world, also turned a blind eye or a deaf ear to this topic for decades.

However, things began to change in recent years.

Homosexual behaviors were decriminalized in China's New Criminal Law in 1997, and the new Chinese Classification and Diagnostic Criteria of Mental Disorders removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses on April 20, 2001. At the end of 2004, for the first time, China's Health Ministry reported publicly on the number of gays infected with the AIDS virus in China.

An Internet survey in 2000 showed that Chinese people are becoming more tolerant towards homosexuality: among the 10,792 surveyed, 48.15% were in favor, 30.9% disapproved, 14.46% were uncertain, and 7.26% were indifferent.

Professor Hu Peicheng, the secretary general of China Sex Study Association, says it's social progress when homosexuality can be discussed openly. "It's actually conducive to the settlement of social problems brought about by homosexuality when we put it in public discussion."

No one is happier to see the change in the attitudes toward homosexuality by media and public opinion than homosexuals themselves. After watching In the Name of Life, Juan, a gay, broke down and cried. He later wrote to Professor Zhang Beichuan, "Finally there came people willing to speak for us." Professor Zhang has received hundreds of letters like this in recent months.

Films are usually regarded as the pioneer of all forms of media in dealing with homosexuality. However, homosexual characters in earlier Chinese films appear as victims. In Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, for example, a young actor with the Beijing Opera is condemned to be a sexual plaything of a lustful mandarin. Or else they try to understand their "problem" as shown in the confrontation between a proclaimed homosexual and a policeman in Zhang Yuan's film East Palace, West Palace.

Released in 1999, Men and Women, directed by Bingjian Liu, was the first Chinese film that depicted homosexuals as normal people living normal lives. Cui Zien, a professor with the Beijing Film Academy, is openly gay and has an important voice on homosexuality across the media spectrum, wrote the script. "I wanted to show how we live day by day," Cui said. The film is set in a rapidly changing urban society where different lifestyles coexist. In this context, the line between male and female sexual roles is blurred. "Encouraging people to think in these terms could be more effective than waving banners," he said.

Lan Yu, a widely acclaimed film about two men's love, reversed many people's view on homosexuality. "For the first time, I got to know that same-sex love can be as strong, melancholy and touching as any heterosexual love," said Wang Lei, a college student in Beijing.

But how far can China's media go in helping alter the public opinion toward homosexuality and win the rights that homosexuals deserve?

Lacking a film rating system, the Chinese government forbids gay movies on TV or in theaters because they are "inappropriate." Despite having received much attention in Taiwan, Hong Kong and other places, the movie Lan Yu is still forbidden in the mainland although the actors are all Mainlanders, and the story is based on a quite popular Internet story written by a mainland netizen. So far, the authorities have not allowed Cui Zien's film Men and Women to be shown in China.

When dealing with the issue of homosexuality, China's media often attaches it to AIDS, finding that leveraging the rising alarm over the spread of AIDS wins them more 'maneuvering space,' including more tolerance from the government. CCTV's In the Name of Life started and ended with an appeal for HIV/AIDS prevention in the gay population.

Meanwhile, many acknowledge that the media's strategy of using AIDS to broach homosexuality issues carries a risk that homosexuals will be blamed for the spread of the disease.

Zhou Dan, openly gay and an activist in promoting the rights of homosexuals in China, said, "Always attaching homosexuality to AIDS would probably leave an impression on the public that homosexuality is dangerous and equal to AIDS."

Xian, a lesbian and the owner of a les bar in Beijing, said the media may function as a double-edged sword: although they need more public awareness, she worries that the media will fail to present the real living conditions and problems of homosexuals and thus produce even more social misunderstandings about gay life.