A groundswell of support for same-sex marriage

The China Project illustration by Derek Zheng

The year 2020 started with a public endorsement of China’s LGBT+ community from Tmall, an online marketplace owned by Chinese tech giant Alibaba, which released a Chinese New Year–themed commercial featuring a same-sex couple, which is very rare in ad campaigns by Chinese brands.

Also this year, China’s LGBT+ community has continued to make quiet progress in its campaign to legalize same-sex marriage, with the country’s top legislative body receiving a record number of pro-legalization submissions. Sixth Tone reports:

In late 2019, the country’s top legislative body allowed the public to make suggestions for an updated draft of China’s civil code. It received an avalanche of submissions, with nearly 200,000 people [in Chinese] sending feedback in one month. Over 190,000 of them made the same proposal: Legalize same-sex marriage. It was so overwhelming that officials publicly acknowledged legalizing gay marriage was among the most popular suggestions they had received during a December 20 press conference.

“As far as I know, never in the history of Chinese legislation have so many people put forward so many opinions on one law,” says Sūn Wénlín 孙文林, co-founder of iFamily, a nongovernmental organization that promotes same-sex marriage in China.

See also: Backlash against anti-LGBT rhetoric from Beijing health official and China’s longest-surviving — and very illegal — LGBT magazine, both published on The China Project last year.