On August 13, ShanghaiPRIDE, the only officially recognised pride organisation in China, has announced that they will cancel all their events in this year (supposed to be in June, but postponed) and will not have any events in the future. In another word, ShanghaiPRIDE will not practically exist, any events relate to the queer community in China, such as colour run, screenings, panel talks, group dating, gay parents help groups, etc. will have to go “underground” in the future.

Also, today, a friend of mine who works in an art gallery told me that their upcoming exhibition is cancelled/censored by the authority, after they reviewed the exhibition plan and checked the background of the artist (being gay). Before she submitted the plan, she was “already being very careful about the censorship almost in an insane level”, yet still, being a gay artist means your exhibition might be cancelled. How far are we from “might be” to “definitely be”?

The queer community in China has already been experiencing restricted conditions. Only until 2001, homosexuality has been officially removed from mental diseases. At that time, the queer community had felt that this day came too late but it came eventually, and were hoping for a more open-minded environment out there to come in the 21st century. But things didn’t unfold as the way as expected, especially since 2010. The recent 10 years are suffocating. We’ve seen the “converting therapy” is still being practised in some places, we’ve seen gay erotic writer being arrested for “creating and distributing porn materials”, we’ve seen gay characters being removed from TV and movies, we’ve seen the Chinese version of “Three billboards" event ended unsettled and to nothing, we’ve seen the last gay pride organisation stop functioning. These incidents didn’t happen in one night, but slowly and slowly it is encroaching on people’s daily life. It is so slow that people can tolerate it little by little. The encroaching process is almost like a dedicated designed programme, as if it has calculated and planned in a perfect schedule.

“The future will be better”.