ABSTRACT
There are no specific laws prohibiting same-sex love (tongxinglian) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).1 Any sexual act that occurs between two consenting adults, and that is conducted in private, is unlikely to attract legal sanctions. However, this does not mean that there are no constraints on the activities of male homosexuals. On the contrary, in China, as with many other countries, the continued social condemnation of homosexuality and family pressure to marry and have children, not only places severe constraints on the lives of male homosexuals, but also can ostracize them from the support of other homosexuals. There is a strong imperative in Chinese culture for sons and daughters to marry and produce descendents. Hence persons erotically inclined to the same-sex often marry opposite-sex partners in order to fulfil their filial obligations and also to deflect public suspicion. Concomitantly, male homosexuals in China have been subjected to varying forms of ‘extra-legal’ sanctions, both in the Maoist period (1949-1976), when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) overturned the then existing criminal code and adopted a system of administrative and Party sanctions; and, in the economic reform period (1978-present), when the Chinese government promulgated a new criminal code and moved towards what is commonly referred to as ‘the rule of law’, as opposed to the Maoist ‘rule of man’.
