Climate for Gays Improves in China

I find China a fascinating nation to watch these days, as the Communist government endeavors to assimilate more and more aspects of western culture while still trying to keep firm control of the political machine.

One way they are doing that is giving gay Chinese people more freedom, to a great extent just leaving them alone as long as they largely confine their activities to a thriving sub-culture.

Here's more on that from Time magazine:

There has never been a better time to be gay in China, but as Destination's somewhat schizophrenic combination of outer reserve and inner exuberance demonstrates, it still pays to be careful. Beijing's attitude has been described as a triple-no policy: no approval, no disapproval, no promotion. That sort of "Don't ask, don't tell" system is emblematic of the regime's delicate handling of many personal-liberties issues raised by the country's growing middle class. For their part, China's gays seem content to live within the government boundaries, albeit not without the occasional snipe at the authorities. Young gay men, for example, have co-opted a venerated communist term—tongzhi, or comrade—when referring to one another.

Historically, Chinese society was relaxed about homosexuality, which was tolerated so long as it didn't interfere with the Confucian duty to raise a family. Although an imperial decree banned homosexuality in 1740 (probably under the influence of Christian missionaries), it was the communists who first drove gays and lesbians underground. The communist government once viewed gays as disruptive to social order and harshly suppressed them, imprisoning and even executing suspected homosexuals. But as China's economy opened to the world, the authorities' stance softened. A law banning sodomy was dropped in 1997, and in 2001 homosexuality was removed from the country's official list of mental illnesses. "It gets freer every year," says Bernie, a fortysomething reveler at the club. "And every year more and more gays come out of the closet. In Beijing and the big cities, you can see couples walking around the shopping malls holding hands. In the smaller cities, I hear it's getting better all the time."