Headlines like The Washington Post’s report on Elon Musk’s government censorship policies (Lima-Strong, 2024) and CNN Business’s coverage of Meta’s decision to remove fact checkers (Duffy, 2025) illustrate current trends in digital media freedom are widely circulating in the news cycle and mainstream media. Such attention being granted to censorship—who can do it and for what purposes—raises questions about the extent to which these practices are jeopardizing the democratic ideal of freedom of expression. However, while the issue of censorship as undertaken by the government or private corporations within the digital sphere has recently become the focus of Western public discourses, these concerns are longstanding throughout the rest of the world. In countries like Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Iran, and China, for instance, censorship within the digital space has become the norm. In fact, for the latter of these countries, China, government censorship of e-communications has been so thoroughly entrenched within Chinese society that citizens and non-citizens are quite familiar with “The Great Firewall”—the name for the Chinese government’s system for restricting internet access within the country.
Much has been written about The Great Firewall as scholars entertain the notion of how such measures come up against certain fundamental human rights, such as the freedom of expression (Stevenson, 2007). Yet comparatively less research has been conducted on how everyday citizens, rather than lobbyists, politicians, or other activists, resist such censorship. To address this gap within the literature, this article aims to examine the discursive strategies that online users employ to circumvent or otherwise undermine regulations regarding freedom of expression. Inquiring into mechanisms of resistance becomes especially relevant in the context of online users who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+), as this group has experienced marginalization and persecution worldwide.
Within the context of China, specifically, the LGBTQ+ community in China is vast, with recent estimates placing figures for the number of LGBTQ-identifying individuals in the country at 70 million (B. Zhang et al., 2022). But while the LGBTQ+ community represents a sizable portion of the Chinese population, much of the LGBTQ-friendly content they produce remains underrepresented within the digital sphere due to censorship. Identifying the means by which members of this community use certain tactics for getting around government censorship measures will provide insight into how the foundations of democracy may be preserved and perpetuated in circumstances that are far from democratic.
This article begins by examining China’s current stance on LGBTQ+ rights in the context of both its historical treatment of this population. It then provides an overview of the literature that has been written on the means by which online users get through or around China’s censorship protocols. By examining the existing literature on users’ digital maneuvering, this section details the role of algorithms, coded language, and virtual private networks (VPNs) in promoting activist ideals against the backdrop of national censorship. The article concludes with a discussion of what might be learned from such innovative activists, and the lessons that can be applied to similar political and cultural contexts, as experienced by members of the LGBTQ+ community in countries that impose similar restrictions on digital communication. Its key takeaways may also prove to be useful points of consideration and the media censorship landscape in the U.S. likewise continues to evolve. But in order to draw these parallels and conclusions, we must first examine the history of LGBTQ+ individuals within China as a country with a history spanning several millennia.
Being LGBTQ Throughout the History of China
The Human Rights Watch reports that as of 2021, the Chinese government pushed for more conservative values, effectively “shrinking space for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transexual and women’s issues” (Roth, 2022). But it may surprise some to know that this wasn’t always the case. In premodern China, expressions like “the passions of the cut sleeve” (断袖之癖) and “shared peach” (分桃之爱) refer to romantic and sexual relationships between men and appear quite frequently in both literary and historical accounts (Prager, 2020). The latter of these sayings is attributable to the legend surrounding Emperor Ling (534- 493 B.C.) and his male concubine Mizi Xia. Xia offered the emperor a peach he had already taken a bite out of. Under any other circumstances, this gesture would have been seen as inherently offensive and irreverent had it not been for the affection the emperor held for his subordinate (Van de Werff, 2010).
The former expression, on the hand, can be traced back even earlier, to the Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE). Records of this period show several emperors engaging in same-sex relationships, such as the one between Emperor Ai and his male lover, Dong Xian. The story goes that Emperor Ai’s affection for his male companion was so sincere that rather than wake up him by getting up, he would cut off the sleeve of his own robe (Prager, 2020). While the veracity of these stories has proven an arduous task for historians, the ubiquity and longevity of these expressions and their corresponding anecdotes testify to social perceptions of same-sex relations of the time, even suggesting that China was very tolerant of non-normative romantic relationships.
Around the same time that the story of the cut sleeve was circulating within the public discourse, however, Confucianism had taken hold as a dominant social ideology. In fact, it was precisely during the Han Dynasty (for part of which Emperor Ai reigned) that Confucianism first achieved significant popularity. With Confucianism’s emphasis on filial piety and procreation, same-sex relationships started to be seen as secondary to reproductive relationships (Tan, 2024).
But the literature on the relationship between Confucianism and same-sex relationships is admittedly divided. Those like Whyke (2022) argue that the Confucian classics placed so much on preserving the husband-wife marital relationship so as to preserve and protect the deep-seated patriarchal order. On the other hand, however, scholars would be wise to resist treating Confucianism itself as a monolithic belief system, composed of followers who all think and act the same. Much like any other ideology or guiding philosophy, whether that is Christianity, Judaism, of Islam, there is bound to be points of divergence among followers. Tan (2024), for instance, acknowledges that “[s]ome Confucians support legalization of same-sex marriage; the reasons differ, ranging from liberal defense of equal rights to Confucian values shared by others who reject same-sex marriage” (p. 160).
Outside of certain ideologies taking hold, for an explanation of the different factors affecting social views towards homosexuality in China, Chiang (2010) encourages the historical analyst to look at the events transpiring in that particular epoch. As he notes, the “social significance of same-sex relations in pre-modern China evolved according to relevant historical factors” (p. 632). He elaborates that during the 18th century, in the period of the Yongzheng reign (1723-35), same-sex relations among men first came to be deemed “illicit.” In light of Chiang’s reflections that the government’s treatment of homosexuality stems from historical factors of the time, it may be helpful to examine what else was occurring within the social landscape. As historians have noted (Hull, 1990), China in the 18th and 19th century saw worsening sex ratios, overpopulation, and pronounced poverty in rural areas, all of which gave rise to a class of single, impoverished men who existed outside of the normative family system. These men, referred to as “bare sticks” (guanggun), were regarded as a threat to the social order, and thus were scapegoated as “deviants” and targeted accordingly (Sommer, 2015).
One of the most significant influences on the evolution of what it meant to be homosexual in China, however, came not from within, but from the outside, by way of imperialism. China has a long history with imperialist external forces, and an even longer history of Western influence, dating as far back as the formation of the Silk Road during the Han Dynasty (130 BCE) (Li, 2022). Such influence shifted from one characterized by the commercial exchange of goods or ideas to one characterized by armed conflict and imperial force. The Opium War of 1839 between China and Great Britain and the subsequent war in 1856 between China and Britain and France was one such example of Western influences forcibly entering China. That is why during the late Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) and Republican China (1912–1949), the adoption of Western legal and social frameworks resulted in the stigmatization of same-sex relationships as “unmodern” and immoral. As Kang (2009) puts it in his book, “To pursue modernity in China under the self-conscious semi-colonial gaze meant to abolish same-sex relations” (p. 146).
Homosexuality in Modern China
The desire to live according to a colonialist paradigm consequently gave rise to the adoption of laws and societal norms that increasingly marginalized, or even criminalized, LGBTQ+ individuals. One notable turning in this regard occurred with the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, as the rhetoric promulgated by the Communist Party once more returned to prizing traditional family structures as a supposed measure of promoting social stability. Under this new regime, same-sex relations became associated with what Kang (2022) terms a decadent “bourgeois mentality” (p. 79). During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), any behavior seen as deviating from socialist values, such as homosexuality, were harshly punished, with LGBTQ+ individuals often being subjected to public humiliation or imprisonment.
In 1997, however, the Chinese government decriminalized homosexuality by removing the legal category of “hooliganism,” which had been used as grounds for prosecuting same-sex acts. Increased tolerance within the legal and political spheres carried over into other domains of public life to encompass the medical community. In 2001, just a few years after the decriminalization of homosexuality, the Chinese Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders, signaling a shift in the medical community (Y. Wang et al., 2019). The period spanning the 1990s to the 2000s also saw a significant increase in LGBTQ advocacy groups.
It is important to point out, however, that although same-sex relations are no longer a criminal act in contemporary China, they are not necessarily afforded special protections or legally recognized as a vulnerable population. There is no formal legal recognition available to same-sex relationships, and marriage and civil unions are not permissible under the law in China (Jeffreys & Wang, 2017). Furthermore, the phrasing of the rights citizens are entitled is ambiguous and thus subject to interpretation. For instance, the constitution of the People’s Republic of China includes broad clauses designed to promote equality and nondiscrimination, such as Article 48 of the Constitution, which states that “Women and men have equal rights” (Cao, 2022). But whether these rights extend to marital ones in same-sex relationships is up for debate, as is the protections such a clause affords to these individuals’ participation in the digital media realm.
Censorship of LGBTQ+ Digital Content in China
In modern-day China, censorship is profound. LGBTQ+ content is heavily censored in the media, regardless of its form, whether that be film, television, or the online platforms at the focus on this article. Terms like “queer” or discussions of LGBTQ+ issues are often monitored and suppressed under “public morality” laws (Chia, 2019). And when such discussions move offline, public gatherings or pride events are significantly restricted, being heavily surveilled at best and outright shutdown at worst. ShanghaiPRIDE serves as a recent example. The event, which has organized public LGBTQ+ gatherings since 2009, cancelled all future events as of 2020 due to intense government scrutiny (Yang & Wu, 2024). In even more recent news, in 2021, WeChat deleted dozens of the LGBTQ+ accounts for Chinese universities in order to suppress the content they were producing (Gan & Xiong, 2021).
Strategies of Resistance
Yet despite the barriers imposed by censorship in the digital media space, the internet has played a pivotal role in connecting LGBTQ+ individuals, as scholars like Chen (2020) have asserted. Popular online platforms like Weibo and WeChat became important spaces for discussion of LGBTQ+ topics and community building. This therefore presents an interesting paradox in that sites and apps like WeChat simultaneously provide a space for promoting the interests of members of the LGBTQ+ community while also curbing such progress through overt censorship measures. One way of understanding how both conditions can be present at the same time is to account for the acts of resistance users engage in to undermine the restrictions imposed upon them.
Algorithms
One primary mechanism that has been addressed in the literature for subverting digital censorship involves manipulating the algorithms that these platforms employ. These machine learning algorithms, which are designed to present users with personalized and curated content, may be used to detect “deviant” content and censor such content through overt means, such as by down a user’s account. Or they the regulation measures these platforms adopt could be more covert, occurring through the use of shadowbans, for example. Jones (2023) defines shadowbans as limiting the “visibility of user-generated content” without “notifying the creator” (p. 204). On the use of shadowbans as a form of censorship, in Shen’s (2023) study of Chinese queer communities on the platform Douyin, the author interviewed one trans-identifying male-to-female (MTF) individual who believed they had been the victim of a shadowban. Regarding the use of this moderation practice for regulating LGBTQ+ content online, this individual stated, ‘When I dress up as a female, my videos always suffer shadowban,’ continuing that ‘Douyin is hostile to individuals who present as overly feminine, as the platform may believe that these individuals have a negative impact on society’ (p. 25).
Regardless of the type of censorship that LGBTQ+ users experience, however, many cite the ability to remain undetected by these platforms’ algorithms as an effective method for avoiding censorship. Within the literature, strategies designed to allow the user to disseminate content that may otherwise be reprobated are collectively grouped under the heading of “algorithmic camouflage.” Algorithmic camouflage may assume many forms. Zhao (2024) notes that one way to achieve camouflage is by substituting homophonic words—that is, words that sound similar to the actual word one is intending to use—for keywords. This strategy effectively allows gay users to perform searches or view content that would otherwise be blocked.
LGTBQ users, however, are not just concerned about the content different platforms’ algorithms are, or are not, delivering to them, but about the data being collected from them in order to tailor this content. In his ethnographic study of gay male users on the popular Chinese digital platforms Douyin, Billibilli, and Xiaohongshu, Shi (2024) found that content creators adjusted their phones’ settings so that their personal data could not be collected by these platforms to then be used for algorithmic recommendations. By preventing his phone from tagging his location at a gay nightclub or bar, for instance, this user believed he could prevent these platforms from identifying him as gay, and thus banning both ingoing and outgoing content accordingly.
According to Zhao and Zhang (2024), knowledge of the inner workings of these platforms, including their algorithmic functions, is essential to skirting content moderation. In fact, the authors identify digital expertise as essential to avoiding content moderation, with one of the participants they interviewed in their study, an employee of a major Chinese digital media platform, saying, “our experienced users know what would trigger a filter alert, and are good at hiding it” (p. 10). The authors are careful to acknowledge, though, that digital expertise is alone is not the only resource one can employ to avoid moderation. Users who hire professionals for content creation and marketing, and those who have a large following that generates substantial traffic to the site, are permitted greater latitudes when it comes to content regulation. Therefore, Zhao and Zhang’s (2024) reflections raise important concerns for equity when it comes to content moderation within the LGBTQ+ online community, as well as present a helpful reminder that some users within these spaces may be more disproportionately affected by censorship than others.
Coded Language
The problem with machine learning, like the processes that popular Chinese social platforms’ algorithms rely on, is precisely fact that they learn. In other words, because the algorithms become increasingly sensitive to the maneuvers digital users employ to subvert them, these same users often turn to other methods as well. In addition to algorithmic camouflage, LGBTQ+ online users also engage in what Shi (2024) terms “linguistic camouflage,” using coded language to avoid censorship.
To examine how members of the LGBTQ community use coded language towards such ends, Zhang (2023) analyzed the online practices among followers of a web series called Guardian, which depicts homoromantic relationships between men. Members of this online fandom, recognizing that if their posts and comments referred to the relationships between characters in overt terms, would be subject to censorship, instead came up with the term “socialist brotherhood,” which is “a moniker developed by fans for male-male romance in dramas under the pressure of censorship” (Ng & Li, 2020, p. 486). Using stand-in language like this thus allows members of the LGBTQ+ community and fans of the series to create community in the digital sphere amidst regulations that may otherwise have prevented them from doing so.
This same series has been the subject of several academic discussions, including Wang (2019) critique. In her article, Wang differentiates between “top-down” strategies of adhering to China’s media censorship protocols, such as the series’ creators euphemizing same-sex relationships as a brotherhood, from bottom-up ones developed by fans. Wang argues that online fans engage in a “tug of war” between censorship and subversive strategies, which she claims reflect the “increasingly visible feminist and queer desire for alternative content in Chinese media, where representations of heterosexual romance subservient to the patriarchal ideology have long dominated the screen” (p. 46). One strategy online fans of the show use involves rewriting its sanitized scripts via fan fiction that remains true to what the series’ subscribers see as its “real” subtext. As Wang notes, to avoid censorship of the online content they produce, these fans will only preview part of their fanfiction text on their site, and require additional actions on the part of the viewer to gauge their motives for visiting the page.
In addition to euphemisms like “brotherhood,” Another instance of linguistic camouflage is the use of the term “contact book,” and its derivatives, such as “booklets.” The term is used as a substitute for “homosexuality” since it adheres to a shared acronym with Chinese. In Shi’s (2024) study, the author details how one Chinese content creator, “Bann,” employs the coded hashtag “#BookletsMeetupOffline,” to direct users to a “role-playing scenario gay college students encounter after using dating apps like Blued” (p. 10).
Shi (2024) goes on exemplify how the reinvention of linguistic practices online is not restricted to men within the LGBTQ+ community. The lesbian women in her study were also found to apply seemingly unrelated hashtags to their content, such as “#ToddlerFood.” They did this to filter out men (assuming that women would be more interested in these topics), in turn carving out a digital space exclusively dedicated for themselves. Along these same lines, in a similar study by Ai et al. (2023), the authors found online lesbian users of the Chinese video-sharing platform Douyin would refer to themselves as “roofers.” In doing so, they were designating themselves as lesbians, using a term only members of this group would recognize.
Creatively reworking one’s language to adhere to, yet at the same time undermine, existing content moderation protocols is what Xu and Liang (2024) refer to as “language play as resistance.” The authors analyzed how online users similarly adapted the language they used to comment on the social issues important to them (in this case, COVID-19). Therefore, as this article implicitly suggests, the strategies detailed here may prove of particular importance for a wide range of human rights issues for citizens under media censorship.
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)
Admittedly, there is still a sizable portion of online users in China would decide to circumvent these censorship protocols altogether by using a virtual private network (VPN). VPNs have proven a reliable countermeasure to censorship for a wide variety of individuals and groups interested in freedom of expression, but this is especially true for members of the LGBTQ+ community. As Ding and Song (2023) note, “VPN services have provided Chinese gay men the means to construct digital sexual publics on less-censored international platforms such as Twitter” (p. 2473).
But as alluded to earlier in this discussion, the digital sphere in not always an equitable one, with some users being able to more freely access VPNs than others. In their study of how The Great Firewall and workarounds like VPNs mediate young urban gay men’s lives, Song and Wu (2023) found that the gay men who were able to circumvent government restrictions through a VPN were seen as part of a “cosmopolitan digital class,” whereas those who were not were seen as “not-so cosmopolitans” (p. 1). Therefore, just as was the case with online users who have a lot of clout on a platform due to their high number of followers, certain strategies for avoiding censorship raise concerns for fairness within the LGBTQ+ community.
Another point of consideration when it comes to VPNs that should be accounted for are the legal ramifications that may accompany their use. Depending on the nature of the infraction, being caught using a VPN in China can result in anything from hefty fines to jail time. As of 2000, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a law called “Interim Provisions Governing Management of Computer Information Networks in the People’s Republic of China.” The law stated that that all “Internet information services must be licensed…or registered with authorities” (Chandel et al., 2019). So, when considering the use of VPNs in place of the more covert strategies presented above, online members of the LGBTQ+ community may face greater legal risks.
The Future of Digital Expression
After reading about the hardships online members of the LGBTQ+ community in China encounter, it may be easy to dismiss this as a “Chinese-only” problem. But freedom of speech has become a global concern. In 2019, for example, Iran shut down the internet for an entire week in response to public protests (Alterman, 2022). A recent report titled Freedom on the Net 2024: The Struggle for Trust Online (Funk et al., 2024) found that digital freedom in North and South America declined in 2024. In Venezuela, for instance, the government used laws to punish online dissent during a political campaign. In the United States, at the time of writing this article, the now President Trump signed the Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship Executive Order (2025) bringing freedom of speech online to the forefront of the news cycle and the public discourse.
At the very same time, however, the U.S. President also signed an executive order recognizing only the sex one is assigned at birth (i.e., male or female), which has a direct impact on transgender individuals, who constitute a sizeable portion of the LGBTQ+ community. Therefore, with drastic social, legal, and political changes being brought to the digital media landscape, it would be wise for scholars to consider the repercussions such changes may have on their personal freedoms. More importantly, it becomes a worthwhile pursuit to consider, just as this article has done, how members of the LGBTQ+ community may work within such constraints to promote their interests and protect their rights.