Queer China deserves better journalism

Crikey, an independent news organization based in Australia, has retracted a three-part series of articles about China’s crackdown on its LGBTQ population. In an update posted last Friday, the publication says it decided to unpublish the stories after sources complained about being “quoted on the record without their consent” or their comments being “mischaracterized or taken out of context.”

“As a result, our confidence in the series has been undermined and we’ve taken the unusual step of unpublishing it,” the outlet explains. “We thank those who did the work to bring this matter to our attention and apologise. We also want to apologise to our readers. Moving forward we endeavour to hold all investigations to the highest possible editorial and ethical standards.”

Titled “China’s Queer Purge,” the retracted series was described by Crikey as a collection of “investigative” stories on how “the Chinese Communist Party has targeted the queer community in China with brutal re-education facilities, draconian censorship, and the banning of gender-affirming hormone therapy.” Its author, Tom Canetti, is a Melbourne-based, cross-platform journalist “focusing on China, human rights, and minority nations,” according to his LinkedIn profile.

Although Crikey has removed the articles in question from its website, archived versions of them can still be found on the internet. (Here are the first, second, and third installments.)

The retraction came after questions surfaced about the integrity of the original reporting. In the first story about LGBTIQ+ conversion therapy and abusive practices in militarized schools, the author implied that all of the institutions in question were “government-sanctioned” while comparing them to re-education camps in Xinjiang. However, according to numerous studies and news articles on the same subject over the years, although these facilities need varying degrees of government awareness or approval to stay in business, they are primarily privately operated and typically brand themselves as internet addiction treatment centers that are not necessarily for conversion therapy purposes.

Meanwhile, much relevant information is left out, including how some of the schools were actively shut down by Chinese officials and several legal cases where Chinese courts have judged forced conversion therapy to be unlawful.

Factual errors can also be found in the rest of Canetti’s reporting. In another instance, for the story about hormone medication, the journalist suggested that because “the CCP’s policies block treatment for people of all ages,” transgender people in need of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) are forced to turn to the black market. However, in fact, China never introduced a blanket ban on all sales of HRT. Rather, in a draft rule made public last year, it proposed more restrictions on the online sales of a list of prescription medications, which include the two most-used drugs by transgender women in the country.

In light of Crikey’s decision to unpublish the series, we talked to Jinghua Qian and Stevie Zhang via email, two Australia-based journalists who were vocal about their displeasure with the reporting and were part of a group who sent a formal complaint to Crikey to bring their concerns to its attention. Qian is the former head of news at Sixth Tone in Shanghai, who has been reporting on queer and trans stories in China since 2016. Zhang is a journalist who has previously done freelance research and writing on China and on queer and trans issues.

For the conversation, Qian and Zhang shared their perspectives on the controversial series, the current state of journalism on China-related matters, and the type of Chinese queer stories they’d like to see more.

How does this episode reflect the current state of journalism from outside China on Chinese matters, especially issues involving human rights? What are some common yet questionable tropes that journalists covering China tend to use?

Zhang: The issues in “China’s Queer Purge” highlights some of the worst of China reporting. Due to China’s geopolitical position, and the various human rights violations the Chinese government has indeed committed, interest in China is frequently limited to only these two aspects of the country. As I mentioned, I believe this narrow interest limits the potential of stories that can come from China, and this is an issue as it stifles nuanced discussion, flattens lived experiences, disregards on-the-ground activism, and only invites scorn against China as a monolith, rather than enrich the public’s understanding of China and Chinese people.

A really common trope I see, that is reflected in these retracted articles, is the impulse to tie all evils of Chinese society back to the central government. For example, rather than focusing on the angle of homophobia and transphobia in Chinese society in which parents regularly send their kids to militarized schools in hopes of “fixing” them, the effort is expended instead on attempting to make tenuous links between the schools and the government, despite the evidence not being strong enough to make such a bold claim. To me, doing the latter, even without sufficient evidence, is actually downplaying the issue and not treating it with the seriousness it warrants, especially as this sort of angle tends to remove agency and autonomy from Chinese people who live these realities every day.

Another trope that I see is that journalists limit themselves to stories that start and end at how oppressive the Chinese government is. To me, this is no longer news (with the caveat when perhaps there are new policies or legislation being tabled). What is far more interesting is how people make do under Chinese oppression. In one of my threads about the series, I pointed at Rest of World for journalism about China that grants agency — Rest of World published a piece about how trans people are carving a space for themselves on Xiaohongshu. Contrast this with the piece on censorship in Crikey’s series, which details that censorship is an issue, queer groups are affected, and sometimes, police may invite you for a cup of tea. Censorship is no longer a question in China anymore. So what further story can we tell?

What were some of the biggest problems you find in Crikey’s reporting? Could you please talk about a few claims or arguments in its coverage that don’t hold up to scrutiny?

Qian: One major problem is not in the content of the reporter’s claims but unethical conduct: as noted in Crikey’s statement, the reporter quoted extensively from an interview given on background without the source’s consent. There were also quotes from other sources that were mischaracterized or taken out of context. In another story, the reporter specifies the medication used in a suicide, which goes against reporting guidelines for suicide.

Then there are a lot of claims that aren’t adequately evidenced or fact-checked. In the first story about LGBTIQ+ conversion/suppression practices in militarized schools (which also target other demographics — they are often marketed as internet addiction schools), Canetti implied that all these facilities are government-operated or endorsed and compares them to re-education camps in Xinjiang. But it’s left very ambiguous in the story whether the survivors were sent to the facilities by their parents or by the police — the testimonies suggest that the survivors’ parents could withdraw them at any time. Of course that is not the case for Uyghurs and Kazakhs detained in government facilities.

So the reality I think is more that the government has failed to protect LGBTIQ+ people from family members forcing them into conversion therapy facilities, which are largely privately run. Some facilities operate with local authorities’ knowledge while others have been shut down by the state, and there have been several important lawsuits where LGBTIQ+ rights advocates have won some recognition from Chinese courts that forced conversion therapy is unlawful. And there has been quite a bit of coverage in Chinese state media of the horrors of both militarized schools and conversion therapy specifically, including undercover investigations. So to me, these are some jarring omissions of fact that misrepresent the issue. And I feel it also minimizes the unique nature and scale of abuses against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, while conversely implying that the situation facing LGBTIQ+ people is not worthy of coverage in its own right. Failing to outlaw or prevent abuse is not the same as actively and systemically instigating it, but it’s still an important story.

In the third story, the reporter claimed that a ban on gender-affirming hormone treatment has led to a rise in trans suicides. Both these claims (that HRT has been banned, and that trans suicides have risen) are traced only to single anecdotal sources. He links sources from The China Project and Sixth Tone that report on restrictions on online sales of HRT rather than a total ban. The claim that it’s impossible to obtain HRT “anywhere in China” is not verified with any pharmacies or hospitals. The claim that regional governments planned crackdowns against “illegal transgender people” links sources that do not actually use that wording — they refer instead to “yàoniáng 药娘” [which is commonly used by young transgender women in China to describe themselves]. I believe the “illegal transgender” wording comes from a Github post that the article draws from very heavily (nearly all the sources and info in the feature come from this one Github post) without citing it. The article also quoted a source saying she felt she was not using enough estrogen so she took two full boxes of Progynova, a total of 42 pills. The implication that trans people will not use HRT safely or responsibly without medical supervision is one that directly supports crackdowns on self-medication/DIY hormone therapy. I think anyone reporting on self-med needs to think about whether their reporting will make things worse for their sources.

For me, the series blurb is where I feel the reporter’s claims were most exaggerated or misleading: “In this three-part investigative series, Tom Canetti reports on how the Chinese Communist Party has targeted the queer community in China with brutal re-education facilities, draconian censorship and the banning of gender-affirming hormone therapy.” I think this stretches the facts. It also frames the stories in a way where the CCP is the only actor. For me it really runs the risk of making things much worse for the queer and trans community in China.

Zhang: There are also a litany of framing issues and unethical journalistic practices shown through the series. It is journalistic malpractice to quote a source without consent, and given the subject matter, doing so is highly irresponsible and endangers the ability for LGBTQIA+ researchers, particularly those focused on China, to do their work.

There is a glaring lack of any mention of on-the-ground Chinese activism and advocacy, demonstrating to me a problem that is rampant among mainstream media in the West, which is that interest in stories on China is frequently limited to those that focus only on the abhorrent actions of the Chinese government and CCP. This limitation narrows the potential of stories that can be reported on and from China, and further flattens the lived experiences of those in China.

This is just a small selection of the numerous errors we found when looking at the series; there were also editorial issues such as not following suicide reporting guidelines or the series being titled “China’s Queer Purge,” making misleading implications. After speaking to several of the experts quoted in the series about their experience, I feel that the journalist approached the topic in search of evidence to support his particular narrative, rather than reporting on the facts as he found them. Hence, my biggest concern remains the framing issue, as that type of approach broadly in the media can fuel other issues, leading to sloppiness with fact-checking and interviews.

What do you make of Crikey’s decision to retract the articles? Do you think this scandal will harm its reputation as a news outlet?

Qian: I think it’s the right decision and I appreciate that Crikey’s editors responded to concerns with a prompt investigation. Personally, seeing a news outlet be accountable for its mistakes raises it in my esteem. And certainly this is not the first or necessarily even the worst case of an Australian news outlet applying less rigor to reporting on China than on other stories — it’s just a case that’s closer to my heart as a former LGBTIQ+ and gender issues reporter in China.

I hope this episode doesn’t put Australian media outlets off covering China or commissioning freelancers for investigative reporting because they fear it’s too risky. I would love for this to be a wake-up call for media outlets in any Anglophone country to look at their editorial processes for commissioning and publishing international investigations. I would like to see editors reflect not only on what safeguards they need to prevent errors like this, but also what resources they could invest in to produce ethical, rigorous reporting on China.

Zhang: I commend Crikey’s decision to retract the articles — retraction and unpublication is a big move and undoubtedly not an easy decision to make. Its statement regarding the reasons behind the retraction is not as strong as I would have liked it to be, as it only mentions that expert sources quoted were unhappy, and does not make any effort to address the false or misleading statements made by the journalist himself.

[Will it harm its reputation?] For the most part, no, I don’t believe so. Many non-Australian netizens were only made aware of Crikey as an outlet after this series was publicized by overseas trans activists, and Crikey primarily focuses on domestic Australian issues. I suspect after this episode, the existence of Crikey will fade for non-Australians, and Australian readers will continue to read Crikey, as it occupies a unique space in the Australian media landscape.

When it comes to journalism on queer individuals in China, what kind of stories would you like to see less and what kind of stories you’d like to see more?

Qian: The dominant frame for any reporting on China is a geopolitical lens — often the underlying question is something like, “How should we assess China and what should Australia’s relationship to China be?” And most of the time I don’t think that’s a pertinent question for the story or the readership. When applied to LGBTIQ+ stories, this geopolitical lens often fuels the homophobic lie that queerness is a Western import. China belongs to queers as much as it does anyone else — and queers have been around much longer than the CCP. It’s important to report on government activities and messaging without uncritically accepting the state’s definition of China.

I would like to see more stories that consider the commonalities and differences between what LGBTIQ+ people around the world experience, and what we can learn from each other. Stories about the evolution of queer advocacy in China — what’s worked, what hasn’t, what’s changing. Stories about queer culture, what’s fierce and funny and weird and electric. Stories that explore ideological debates within queer communities — I want to be able to take our right to exist as given and talk about the next thing! And of course, stories that understand China as a real place where real people live.

Zhang: I would like to see more stories about how queer people in China make do under oppressive, homophobic, transphobic conditions. The conditions under which they live is unquestionable — so how are they living? For example, stories about how queer people are carving their own spaces, online and offline, despite the broader socio-political environment. Or stories about trans healthcare that is fighting for a place, doing good work, and slowly changing the minds of transphobic parents. I think there is a difference between inviting people to gawk at how awful China is, versus inviting people to have sympathy and solidarity for people struggling under difficult conditions in China. Homophobia and transphobia in Chinese society are absolutely issues that are worth reporting on, and I’m not saying to “focus on the positive,” but rather that the oppressive backdrop should be just that, a backdrop, and the more interesting stories are what queer people are doing to survive it.