China is bad about LGBT rights.

There has been some progress, but it’s mostly driven (as it has been in other countries) from the bottom up, from grassroots changes in attitude, and not from the central government. While China doesn’t have the tradition of conservative Christian beliefs that fuel hatred in the US, there’s other beliefs that fuel prejudice and discrimination, especially among older generations.

Many Western sources do try to leverage LGBT issues for geopolitical agendas, as they do with Palestine, for example. But that doesn’t mean that what they say is false. I believe cross-referencing between Western sources and pro-LGBT Chinese sources such as Sixth Tone gives the most accurate picture of the state of things on the ground. Personally, I found Naomi Wu’s perspective to be an invaluable case study, before she unfortunately ran afoul of censors on a different issue.

Hopefully the situation improves for queer people in China, but I fear that increasing global tensions will only slow down progress on that front.