Abstract:
This article examines media publicity surrounding the case of Li Ning—a
34-year-old native of Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, who made legal history in the
People’s Republic of China (PRC) on 17 October 2004 when he was sentenced to
eight years jail and fined 60,000 yuan for organizing male-male prostitution services
in a recreational business enterprise. Reportedly the first conviction of its kind, the
case proved to be controversial for three reasons. First, it prompted legal debate
over the nature of China’s recent shift to a “rule of law” and associated conceptions
of due legal process and individual and sexual rights. Second, it intimated that
homosocial prostitution—male-male prostitution in which neither participant may
self-identify as homosexual — is an integral but frequently neglected component of
China’s burgeoning, albeit banned, sex industry. Finally, it raised questions regarding
the perceived appropriate parameters of same-sex sexual conduct in a country
facing rapidly increasing rates of HIV/AIDS infection. An examination of media coverage
of these concerns suggests that accusations of official homophobia in the PRC
are overstated: they elide the specificity of debates on homosexuality in present-day
China due to their overarching concern with Western understandings of sexuality as
constitutive of selfhood and (rightful) sociopolitical identity.
