Queer Chinese Cinema: From ‘celluloid comrades’ to ‘digital video activism’

This article examines queer cinema in Mainland China in the post-Mao era. It traces a brief trajectory of its development from the emergence of queer characters on the cinematic screen from the 1990s to the proliferation of Boys’ Love representations on video streaming websites in the 2010s. This article demonstrates that China’s media censorship has continued to shape queer representations in significant ways. These policies and regulations do not simply limit queer representations; they also produce specific types of representations, aesthetics and politics, and this article reveals their diversity, complexity and ambiguity. This article also suggests that the post-Mao social, political and industry contexts shape queer representations in specific ways, and these representations have in turn reflected and participated in China’s social change.