‘Banning sissy idols to clean up the entertainment industry’: Queer practices of shipping BTS in Mainland China

On 2 September 2021, Mainland China’s media regulator SARFT introduced guidelines to ‘clean up’ the entertainment sector, banning the ‘sissy idols’ trend and danmei 耽美 culture (male–male romance by and for women and sexual minorities). A few days later, Sina Weibo, a major Chinese social platform, banned K-pop fan accounts, including BTS, previously criticized for Korean War comments. These crackdowns by Chinese authorities reveal concerns about male effeminacy and homoerotic K-pop idol shipping practices. This article focuses on China’s boycott of BTS as a case study to explore challenges to gender and sexuality norms through K-pop queer shipping practices, where fans imagine romantic relationships among real or fictional figures. Employing discourse analysis of media articles, editorials and netizens’ comments in response to the boycott of BTS, we argue that although Chinese queer K-pop fans are empowered to objectify male bodies and explore sexual desire via creative shipping practices of androgynous idols, their agency is often limited and complicated by fervent nationalistic sentiments, heteropatriarchy and heteronormativity. This study is timely for reflecting on Chinese pushback against the Korean Wave as a purportedly corrupting force, especially for its young women and LGBTQ+ consumers.