ABSTRACT
In Summer 2020, the China Rainbow Media Award, a queer civil society group and media watchdog, ran a community media training course for queer activists and media producers. Funded by the United Nations Development Programme, the course took place online through the Chinese-language video conferencing platform Tencent because of the COVID-19 restrictions. The year 2020 was a particularly difficult time for China’s queer communities. After experiencing a brief moment of euphoria when a spokesperson for China’s legislative body, the National People’s Congress, acknowledged in December 2019 that the same-sex marriage proposal was one of the most popular proposals submitted for the congressional consideration and debate, it soon became clear in March 2020 that China’s new Civil Code was not ready to endorse lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer rights. A global coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, soon swept China, and subsequently all over the world. All public events had to be cancelled for a few months following the Chinese New Year.
