alt Hacker NewsChina has a pretty vibrant LGBTQ scene, even Shenzhen was known as comrade city in the 90s. China is at the same time very closed and very open. It’s hard to describe.
I had lots of friends when I lived in Beijing who were gay, the gay bars weren’t underground and my gay coworkers weren’t in the closest, for L/girls it was even more out in the open (especially at the art schools). If you haven’t lived in China I guess you wouldn’t have a clue.
I went to China recently it felt different, the recent govt stance seem a lot more against the idea and the ones before which was my point, China in the 90s was a very different country from the China of today, then again I haven't been there then.
Again it's hard to say where it's open or where it's closed, they seem to be back sliding in very weird ways. I am not part of the LGBTQ community so I can't say for certain how bad it is, so I won't comment further but UN & human rights watch has been citing increasing censoring of LGBT representation and open-ness in China in recent times.
The biggest concern with China is lack of democratic freedom means as long as it's not bad enough to revolt the country can back slide pretty easily on many metrics with complete silence, no protests etc.
[1]: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/06/25/china-social-media-films...