Article is 2 years old, but it's a happy article and I wanted to post it anyways.

EDIT: For anyone curious, here's a link to her Douyin page: https://www.douyin.com/user/MS4wLjABAAAAC-deOgCmNN2bIugq3od6LBI-Ws7Pn8EuLwWBjZg-ghg It says she has 11.151 million followers and 170 million likes, which is awesome.

  • kristina [she/her]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Dug into it, and there wasn't any reasons given, however some people that used to go there speculated the following:

    • The US Consulate was invited to speak at the center a couple of times... which seems uh... like an extremely bad decision. I've talked to people in China involved in centers and that is a HUGE no-no.

    • There were conflicts with neighboring buildings that led to them being kicked out of their building.

    • Othello [comrade/them, love/loves]
      ·
      1 year ago

      The US Consulate was invited to speak at the center a couple of times... which seems uh... like an extremely bad decision. I've talked to people in China involved in centers and that is a HUGE no-no.

      oof that is definitely suspicious

      here were conflicts with neighboring buildings that led to them being kicked out of their building.

      typical, happens all the time everywhere.

      • kristina [she/her]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah there are plenty of groups that still operate in Beijing, obviously, at least 10 major ones from what I can tell. So while it does suck, its overblown that people think this is the end of LGBT activities in Beijing in western media.

        • Othello [comrade/them, love/loves]
          ·
          1 year ago

          ten major ones is nice! yeah i could tell all the articles popping up were vauge pro us propaganda but couldn't find anything clear. I wish I could speak Chinese.

          • kristina [she/her]
            ·
            1 year ago

            If you got the know how to get around firewalls, text translators are very good these days and are a nice crutch. I mostly know basic chinese words that are useful on websites like 'search' or 'menu'

    • Putinbot [comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Unfortunately, a co-founder of the Beijing LGBT Center, Wan Yanhai, had ties to the NED, which the government has been cracking down on more recently. Yanhai had a fellowship with them. He was also one of the signatories of the Charter 08 manifesto, which called for the end of CCP rule and privatization of all state-owned enterprises. Also doesn’t really help that there are still some out of touch socially conservative boomers in the government, who believe LGBT activism to be a western plot. China is still overall making progress in LGBT rights, especially with younger Chinese being generally very supportive, but there are still occasional setbacks along the way like this.