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Homosexuality in China

Homosexuality has been documented in China since ancient times. According to one study by Bret Hinsch, for some time after the fall of the Han dynasty, homosexuality was widely accepted in China but this has been disputed. Several early Chinese emperors are speculated to have had homosexual relationships accompanied by heterosexual ones.

There exists a dispute among sinologists as to when negative views of homosexual relationships became prevalent among the general Chinese population, with some scholars arguing that it was common by the time of the Ming dynasty, established in the 14th century, following homophobia entrenched in the Mongol empire and the Yuan dynasty, and others arguing that anti-gay attitudes became entrenched during the Westernization efforts of the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China in the 19th and 20th centuries. For most of the 20th century homosexuality in China had been legal, except for a period between 1979 and 1997 where male anal sex was punishable as "hooliganism".

In a 2016 survey by the organization WorkForLGBT of 18,650 lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, 3% of males and 6% of females surveyed described themselves as "completely out". A third of the men surveyed, as well as 9% of the women surveyed said they were in the closet about their sexuality. 18% of men surveyed answered they had come out to their families, while around 80% were reluctant due to family pressure.

There was a step forward for the China LGBT community after the Weibo incident in April 2018, where the public outcry over the platform for banning homosexual content led the platform to withdraw the decision. Yet, in 2021 Weibo and WeChat censored the accounts of numerous LGBT student organizations without any prior warning. Provided by Wikipedia