Table of Contents

Urban ambition in Chengdu, China: How the LGBTQ community navigates the consequences of city-regionalism

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments and disclaimers

COVID-19 statement

Acknowledgments

Disclaimer of previous use

Abstract

Introduction

The downside of freedom: Chengdu’s urban reputation and its consequences
The backstory of Chengdu’s rise to LGBTQ prominence

Literature review

City-regionalism and inter-urban competition
In our image: queer urbanization and globalization

Methodology

Queering snowball sampling: friendship as method
Data collection: The matter of distance
Other constraints and limitations

Research findings and discussion

The makeup of participants
The allure of acceptance; the conditionality of tolerance
On whose authority?
City-regionalism changes hands

Conclusion: arrangements and alliances

Appendix

Reference list

Acknowledgments and disclaimers

COVID-19 statement

When the topic for this research was selected in December, 2021, I held out hope that by the summer of 2022, China’s intensive COVID-19 restrictions on foreign travel would have loosened enough for this research to be carried out as a field-work-informed case study. As China’s restrictions remained steadfast, this project was reworked to be an entirely remote effort, with all data collection done digitally.

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank the people who not only made this research project possible but smoothed the path of inquiry. Thank you to my dissertation supervisor Professor Hyun Bang Shin for providing scholastic advice and article recommendations during this process. Thank you to my Chinese teacher, Lu Hong laoshi (卢红老师), for helping me outside the context of our class. Thank you to WZY for a deep and immediate friendship and for providing an unbelievable amount of help on this project. Thank you to WQ for your involvement and willingness to engage in such depth. Thank you to ZY and FB who shared thorough accounts and detailed descriptions how they learned to serve the queer community on the ground level. Thank you to all participants who shared their experiences, their networks, and a very personal and political part of their lives.

Disclaimer of previous use

In the ‘Other constraints and limitations’ section of Methodology, this paper references the methods I initially included in the research proposal for the Urban Research Methods (GY452) summative assignment, particularly my intent to do a media review (original work 1500 words in length). All inclusions have been substantially reworded.

Abstract

Chengdu has garnered an unofficial but widespread reputation as China’s most LGBTQ-friendly city, which has attracted tourists, residents, and investment. This reputation was developed during an age of urban entrepreneurialism where Chengdu marketed itself to international audiences in order to succeed in China’s inter-urban competition. It did so by maneuvering as a city-region, connecting the core city with hinterlands in pursuit of urban success in the world city network. In recent years, seeing the value of city-regionalism as a developmental strategy, China’s central government has reconsolidated its power and influence over city-regions like Chengdu, asserting national ambitions and using existing structures of city-regionalism to accomplish them. This paper explores the lived experiences of the LGBTQ community in Chengdu at the ground level to call attention to the influence and consequence of the human element in a process that’s all-too-easily only evaluated from a macro scale.

Introduction

The downside of freedom: Chengdu’s urban reputation and its consequences

In the fall of 2020, despite firmly-held bans on foreign entrants, tourism in China had buoyed among its domestic market. After the complete lockdowns in the first half of the year, the lift of cross-province travel bans in July 2020 permissed a return to internal travel (Reuters, 2020). One destination that received renewed touristic attention was the city of Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, famous for its laid-back atmosphere, giant pandas, and spicy cuisine. There was another unique characteristic of the city attracting domestic tourists: its unofficial but widespread reputation among the younger generations as ‘Gaydu’ (Qian, 2016; Ellwood, 2018; AFP, 2020).

Hughes (1997: 6) spoke of gay tourism: “tourism and being gay are inextricably linked. . . because of the social disapproval of homosexuality, many gay men are forced to find gay space.” As Chinese tourists were cut off from travel to foreign destinations, those who may have initially gone to other countries for their more tolerant and open LGBTQ environments, like Thailand, were boxed in. Thailand is a well-known and geographically-proximate destination for gay Chinese tourists, and operators have taken note of the significant potential of the Chinese LGBTQ ‘rainbow economy.’ “Chinese travel companies are also crowding in to tap the market...nearly a dozen agents offer trips to Thailand for gay tourists, with ads showing travellers partying on yachts decorated with rainbow streamers and balloons” (AFP, 2017). A Bloomberg News article asserted that the estimated value of China’s non-coastal ‘rainbow economy’ (which largely centers in Sichuan) is around $300 billion, and the consultancy firm LGBT Capital estimated that the country’s LGBTQ purchasing power was at $541 billion (Chen et al., 2019). Destinations that can attract that wandering spending power stand a lot to gain.

Domestic tourism had hit an all-time high in 2019 for Chengdu, comprising about 11% of Chengdu’s GDP at just over 455 billion RMB. That total dropped to 300 billion RMB in 2020 (CEIC Data, 2020). Chengdu’s reputation for being LGBTQ-friendly funneled domestic tourists seeking a more open-minded environment into the city during the fall of 2020, which bolstered a suffering tourism industry. The visitors brought their purchasing power, but they also brought problems. “A spike in the number of domestic LGBTQ visitors [to Chengdu] ― unable to travel overseas because of the coronavirus pandemic ― drew unwanted attention from city authorities” (AFP, 2020). In October 2020, explicit photos were posted online with ties to a popular gay venue, MC Club. This triggered a chain reaction: The club was shuttered, other major gay venues in Chengdu were temporarily shut down, and authorities investigated all LGBTQ organizations in the city (ibid.). “Thus the gay and lesbian tourism industry is indebted to the culturally constructed homophobia of another place, one that is intrinsic to the framework of modernity and that enables, rather than deflects, tourist interest as well as fantasies of sexual transgression” (Puar, 2002: 104). Sexual transgression being, in this case, what got MC Club shut down. Before 2020, the owner of MC club

[was] very proud that MC can often attract customers from Xi'an, Guizhou and other surrounding areas of Sichuan and Chongqing. In particular, he relished the fact that during this year's National Day, several customers made a special trip from Beijing and stayed at MC for 16 days. In the eyes of these gay men who have lived for half a month, MC is more like a "gay hotel" than a gay entertainment club (translated from Jiang, 2018).

The saga of MC Club is emblematic of how the urban reputation of the LGBTQ community in Chengdu supported the city by attracting tourists beyond the city-region during a time when Chengdu’s travel industry was at a disadvantage. However, it was the LGBTQ community itself that suffered injurious consequences to its businesses and institutions in the process. Of course, not all tourists seeking out a more LGBTQ-friendly urban environment went to Chengdu for its saunas, nor did they all participate in what the state termed ‘group licentiousness' (聚众淫乱), but a story of this caliber garnered national attention (AFP, 2020), and as one of my research participants put it: “This raised a lot of attention from local police and the public, and gradually they tightened many policies towards clubs that have LGBTQ/rainbow elements” (WQ, personal communication, August 1, 2022). The knock-on effect of this negative attention has consequences for the LGBTQ community in Chengdu. It changes how individuals navigate and experience the city, even as the community as a whole retains an attractive influence on tourists, residents, and investments on a national and global scale. The community’s effect interacts uniquely with Chengdu’s orientation of its development strategy around city-regionalism.

City-regionalism is an analytical framework (Jonas and Moisio, 2018) consequent of and descended from globalization:

The new ‘urban experts’ are increasingly minded to measure economic development not so much in terms of the performance of national economies but instead in relation to how the world’s global cities and city-regions measure up against each other on various economic and demographic indicators. (Moisio and Jonas, 2018, cited in Jonas, 2020: 702). Given that “In China, the city-region has recently been selected as a new development strategy” (Yang et al., 2021: 1), it is valuable to understand how this change in scalar politics affects minority groups at the ground level, and likewise, how the everyday lived experiences of these groups end up playing an agentive role even in the midst of the “scalar politics characterized by political games and power struggles” (Jonas & Ward, 2007, cited in Yang et al., 2021: 2).

This paper investigates how Chengdu’s LGBTQ community negotiates itself among the various permissions and conditions of city-regionalism, which is in a state of tension among local, national, and global ambitions for the city. “It seems that city-regions – and in particular global city-regions – are fast becoming national and international policy instruments, as national and local governments seek not just to manage domestic economic growth but also to assert their influence at a global scale” (Jonas, 2020: 703). Which level of vested interest (individual, local, national, global) gets to ‘drive’ city-regionalism is, as this paper will argue, in the midst of a pendulum swing. Each level has sometimes-contradictory methods and motivations for orienting the city-region that interplay with China’s inter-urban competition and the central state’s increasing cultural control over civil society. This makes for multivalent experiences of Chengdu’s queer1, urban environment. It’s easy to lose sight of the human element and the consequences which are felt on the ground when evaluating urban scalar politics and local-to-global political tensions. Using the ethos of ‘friendship as method’ (Tillmann-Healy, 2003) and principles from remote-work digital ethnography (Góralska, 2020; Muskat, Muskat and Zehrer, 2017), I’ve gathered qualitative data using surveys and digital interviews from 24 participants about their exposure to and experiences with Chengdu’s urban LGBTQ community. It is my own ambition that by the end of this paper, the reader will understand the way the LGBTQ community is at once supporting a city it isn’t reciprocally supported by (at least not at an official level) and will be empathetically curious about what that means for the urban future of the LGBTQ community in Chengdu.

The backstory of Chengdu’s rise to LGBTQ prominence
Nestled in a mountain basin in the southwestern province of Sichuan, Chengdu has a geocultural inheritance of being a fertile ‘land of abundance’ (天府之国). Far from the central state’s capital, both historically and contemporarily, it has avoided the brunt of the government’s edicts and oversight (Wei, 2007: 573). Its proximity to Tibet and other southern ethnic minorities, as well as its centuries-long history as a city of migrants, makes for a diverse population (ibid.). This combination of factors has resulted in a city-region that is marginalized and prosperous, diverse and comparatively tolerant. It also fostered an attitude many acknowledge as both ‘mind your business’ and ‘anything goes’ (Chen et al., 2019). While China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997 and depathologized it in 2001 (ibid.), widespread acceptance has not been achieved. Amid the country’s hostility towards the LGBTQ community, Chengdu stands out as something of a haven. “Many [LGBTQ individuals] converge on the city because of its liberal and laid-back atmosphere, which Huang [founder of a Chengdu-based LGBTI organization] believes is a result of its substantial migrant population and ethnic diversity” (Qian, 2016).

1 Queer and LGBTQ are not interchangeable terms, and they will both be used as appropriate. To establish an operational definition: it’s “queer if it challenges heterosexism and heteronormativity (the idea that heterosexual is normal and all other sexualities deviant) and if it problematizes the binary construction of hetero- and homosexualities” (Butler, 1990, cited in Tillmann-Healy, 2003: 733).

Although imperial China had its own history of homosexuality2, “Modern homosexual identity did not emerge in Mainland China until the early 1990s when economic and political liberalization provided the structural condition for the development of an independent gay identity” (Wei, 2007: 574). Economic reform fueled immense amounts of intra-national migration, some of which involved queer migration, traditionally depicted as “the movement of lesbians and gay men from rural areas and small towns to the major cities” (Luo, 2020: 578), a la ‘Get Thee to a Big City’ (Weston, 1995). “The economic reforms and subsequent neoliberalization have also produced a new ‘desiring China’ that has intensified a sense of individualism under strict state regulation. Consequently...LGBT culture and the gay economy have become increasingly visible” (Gong and Liu, 2021: 4). The advent of the digital age furthered this visibility. “There are few offline spaces available for queer narratives and histories. Despite restrictions placed on freedom of speech within Chinese cyberspace, it is clear that the Internet provides an essential networking tool for China’s diverse tongzhi3 community” (Shaw and Zhang, 2018: 284). Yu Fei, COO of a Chengdu-based NGO focused on the health and well-being of gay men since 2002, stated that even when he arrived in Chengdu at the turn of the century, it was not as open as it is currently (Qian, 2016). “Even as early as March 2001, Time Magazine was claiming that the Internet had done as much in five years for Asia’s gay community as the 25 years following Stonewall had done in the West” (Shaw and Zhang, 2018: 283).

Over the course of this nearly-50-year period since the opening-up of the Chinese economy, the confluence of all these factors incubated a contemporary LGBTQ environment in Chengdu that has both impacted and been impacted by Chengdu’s development goals and globalized ambitions.

2 See Prager, 2020, for a brief history of homosexuality among Chinese emperors, and chapter 4 of Wu, 2012 for homosexual romance among Qing literati.
3 Tongzhi is the colloquial word used to refer to LGBTQ people in China, literally translating to ‘same will.’

Literature review

City-regionalism and inter-urban competition

One of the primary thinkers in the city-regionalism camp, Scott (2019), asserts the validity of the city-region as an analytical unit. He does so partially in rebuttal to what is perceived as the muting of difference from the ‘ordinary city’ camp (Robinson, 2006). Chengdu would have been the perfect candidate to sweep under the ‘ordinary city umbrella.’ In 2012, on a scale of Alpha++ to Gamma-, the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) ranking system didn’t even give Chengdu a letter grade, instead labeling it under “High Sufficiency” (Globalization and World Cities Research Network, 2014). An ordinary city, indeed. However, in the most recent GaWC city rankings in 2020, Chengdu had shot up to Beta+ status, benchmarking against Washington D.C., Rome, Tel Aviv, and Berlin (Globalization and World Cities Research Network, 2020), a fact that was celebrated in the state-run China Daily (Chen, 2020). These rankings, notably, measure “The importance of cities as nodes in the world city network (i.e., enabling corporate globalization)” (Globalization and World Cities Research Network, 2020). I agree with Robinson’s (2006) assertion that “theoretical insights cannot be based on the experiences of a few wealthy cities only, and that a post-colonial field of urban studies should assume the potential for learning in a broad range of different settings” (Schuermans, 2009). My point in highlighting this is not to laud Chengdu’s ‘ascendancy’ from the status of the ordinary, but to maintain that it’s because Chengdu was manipulated as a city-region that it wound up with its current form and status among Chinese cities.

In the legacy of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reformation policies, the unique dynamics of Chinese urbanism and its uneven development (See Shin, 2019: 4) have begotten a nationalized inter-urban rivalry. “The policies from the central government encourage all Chinese cities to ‘go out and sell themselves,’ important aims being to attract investments and tourists” (Björner, 2013: 213). Because of this, Chengdu adopted the precepts of an entrepreneurial city: “China has seen some distinctive characteristics in entrepreneurial governance. The local state is now directly involved in the making of a visionary plan to reposition the status of the city in the new environment of economic competition” (Wu and Zhang, 2007: 715; see 716–718 for a well-reviewed theoretical background). Chengdu’s local strategies to court tourists, residents, and investment on a global level are motivated by a desire to succeed in this nationalized inter-urban competition (Björner, 2013: 211). Still, they have the flexibility to employ methods that have some distance from central state dictation. “Local officials act as the equivalent of a board of directors and sometimes more directly as chief executive officers in order to push for local developmental goals. Such urban growth impetus comes mainly from local and foreign sources without direct financial assistance from the central state” (Scholvin, 2021: 2). In Björner’s (2013) article on Chengdu’s digital city branding, she detailed the city’s aspirations to become more internationally recognized and to attract residents, tourists, and investment: “A focus on internationalization in Chengdu’s city branding is related to the overall strategy of the city...The objective of Chengdu is to build a truly international tourism destination” (213–214). These branding priorities are echoed in the city’s Urban Development Plan of Chengdu (2016-35) through which “the provincial capital expects to become a world-class city through sustainable development by 2050. And it has rolled out a further goal – to become a world-class tourist destination across the globe” (Li, 2018). To further these urban development goals, Chengdu has rolled out an “overseas marketing network extend[ing] across four continents, and it has established tourism centers in San Francisco, Paris, Moscow, and Seoul” (ibid.), as well as multiple international digital campaigns (Björner, 2013: especially 215–218).

Municipalities were set loose to make something of themselves, and this angling towards the international became a preferred strategy for Chengdu.

As the state decentralizes decision-making to local governments and introduces free market forces to transform the economy, the previous rigid urban hierarchy organized by vertical linkages and political functionality is disintegrating and being replaced by a new system of cities shaped primarily by horizontal connections and economic exchange. (Pow, 2011: 56).

Rodríguez-Pose (2008: 1027) stated, "The minimum common denominator of virtually all definitions of a city-region is the presence of a core city linked by functional ties to a hinterland.” In a study by Shi and Tang (2020), they evaluated the institutional changes that occurred because of how “the development rights of rural land became tradeable [in Chengdu]” (Jonas, 2020: 706). Chengdu umbrella-ed, surrounding rural hinterlands, acquiring transfer of development rights. In the land acquired through “the expansion of administrative regions through annexation and boundary adjustments” (Wu and Zhang, 2007: 716), 21 industrial parks were built intended to lure international investment like French, German, and South Korean businesses (Clover, 2016). “Chengdu’s government says that Apple contractor Foxconn makes half of the world’s iPads in Chengdu... The government also says that half of Intel’s laptop computer chips are made there as well” (ibid.). The draw of affordable labor for tech industries is how Chengdu’s local officials maneuvered the city-region and angled its appeal to foreign investment. “By late 2020, 305 of the world’s top 500 companies had operations in Chengdu” (Nulimaimaiti, 2021). This kind of urban entrepreneurialism—a combination of city branding (Björner, 2013), seeking international investment (Clover, 2016; Scholvin, 2021), and locally-autonomous decision-making about the development of the core and hinterlands (Wu and Zhang, 2007; Li, 2018)—comprise the traits of Chengdu’s city-regionalism under an age of inter-urban competition.

Much city-regionalism literature focuses on “the economic forces that generate these urban behemoths, with special reference to the logic of agglomeration, growth, and spatial interaction” (Scott, 2019: 115). This paper aims to contribute to the body of city-regionalism literature by adding perspective on the human element of how minority groups in a non-western context are impacted when urban geographies are treated as city-region units.

In our image: queer urbanization and globalization

“Difference is increasingly marshaled as a symbol of progress and modernity for the purposes of fostering national and urban competitiveness in various contexts” (Oswin, 2015: 558). In their article ‘Authenticating Queer Space: Citizenship, Urbanism and Governance,’ Bell and Binnie (2004: 1807) “explore how sexual ‘others’ are conscripted into the process of urban transformation and, by turn, how city branding has become part of the sexual citizenship agenda.” Chengdu provides an interesting counter case to this. Chengdu’s investment in its brand is well noted (Björner, 2013; Björner, 2017; Li, 2018), but none of its official branding mentions its inclusivity of the LGBTQ community, which makes it attractive to live and work in for many individuals. Zhang and Zhao (2009: 245) state, “City branding can also be seen as an instrument to make a city’s competitive advantage known, and to promote the history of the city, the quality of the place, its lifestyle and culture.” The LGBTQ community is decidedly part of all this, but it is also a competitive advantage: other cities in China don’t have a reputation for being LGBTQ-friendly to the extent that they attract residents (Wei, 2007), tourists (Ellwood, 2018; AFP, 2020), and investment (Chen et al., 2019). So we run into an interesting situation not yet fully explored in city branding literature: what happens when you can’t brand one of your city’s unique selling propositions? Kanai’s (2014:1) article on homo-entrepreneurialism put forth the idea of “the sexualized worlding of cities under the hegemony of neoliberal urbanism,” by highlighting how “class selectivity is betrayed by the imagery [of how]...[homo]sexual citizens are portrayed against selective settings of an orderly, inclusive, and investment-ready city” (ibid.: 2).

In Roy and Ong’s (2011) seminal work, ‘The Art of Being Global’ they put forth three traits that typify the developing asian city. One of these was the ‘emulatable’ city (17), which is characterized by the transmission of urban process in order to replicate developmental success. Were China a more tolerant environment, they might have employed this strategy of homonormative, neoliberal branding and emulated urban approaches used by cities like Singapore which offered nominal acceptance (if not policy protections) to the LGBTQ community for the sake of fostering the image of a creative economy (Oswin, 2014; Yue and Leung, 2016). But this is not the case, so we have a more nuanced situation to evaluate. Instead, the model of queer urban sexuality in asian cities that is described by Yue and Leung (2016) is more applicable to this paper. They assert that instead of the emancipatory chronology and mainstreaming of gay districts (750) that is typical of Western LGBTQ centers like London, San Francisco, and New York, the development of queer urbanism in asian cities follows a logic driven by the “multidirectional flows of queer globalization” (751).

This model accounts for how top-down strategies of governance (e.g. creative city planning, cultural policy, commerce and market) are poached and twisted to create new spaces and practices from below. Rather than an oppositional rejection of state policies, key to this strategy is the force of neoliberalism and the unpredictable ways it opens up new arrangements and alliances for queer communities (ibid).

Rejection of state policies is particularly consequential in China, and therefore more challenging to enact. “Urban research on sexualities has tended to focus on the territorialisation of same-sex desire and identifications in territories such as gay villages or neighbourhoods and has often overlooked the sexual politics of networked relations and connections between cities” (Binnie, 2014: 590). As my research will reveal, Chengdu doesn’t have a ‘gayborhood,’ and can’t activate the same neoliberal permissions that other queer asian cities like Singapore and Bangkok can. Therefore this paper will highlight some of the ‘arrangements and alliances’ the queer community in Chengdu relies on instead under the changing contexts of city-regionalism. It will speak to how reputation (multidirectional) is a more relevant player than official city branding (one-way) when it comes to how Chengdu’s LGBTQ community pulls tourists, residents and investment. The condition of discretion makes Chengdu sexualized less under the ‘hegemonics of neoliberal urbanism’ but more through a radical, multi-directional system of queer support in spaces and practices from below.

Methodology

Queering snowball sampling: friendship as method

Critical geography “draws on critical theories of race, gender, and post-colonialism, as well as geographical concepts like space, place, territory and uneven development” (Devine and Ojeda, 2017: 606). Methodologies that work with the heavily-politicized layers of intersectionality need to adapt to the needs of the participants and put their wellbeing at the fore. Navigating the subjectivities and oftentimes-fraught histories of LGBTQ communities anywhere is a delicate process, but doing so in a socio-political context like China requires additional sensitivity and protection. Even in a comparatively tolerant context such as Chengdu’s, an elevated degree of care is necessary to respect and ensure participants' privacy. My own identity as a queer lesbian served as a point in my favor, making my research feel less exploitative and voyeuristic to participants. That said, “while those who variously identify as homosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual or otherwise non-heteronormative share a range of common experiences around legal, political and social constraints, there are also significantly different lived experiences of oppression and exclusion between these groups” (Gorman-Murray, Johnston and Waitt, 2016: 99). I am still an outsider: I am not Chinese, and, despite having steeped myself in an academically- and interpersonally-informed understanding of the city, I have never been to Chengdu. The oppressions of the Chinese state toward the LGBTQ community don’t affect me the same way they do my participants who live in and return to China. The dynamics established between the participants and myself allowed me to carry out this project in a way that felt safe for them.

Much of this protection relies on ‘friendship as method’ (Tillmann-Healy, 2003). This research depended on a network of friendships in which I had the good fortune of finding myself. I was asking my participants about a personal and political part of their lives, and their related experiences in a country that is decidedly not LGBTQ-friendly. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I did not have very good luck with cold-calling (emailing, DM-ing) potential participants; it’s asking a lot of someone to disclose that kind of information to a stranger. Only one of my participants is someone who responded to an online direct message without having known me before the research began, or connecting with me via a mutual friend. In her study on friendship as method, Tillmann-Healy (2003: 731) referenced Rubin (1985), stating, “In friends, we seek trust, honesty, respect, commitment, safety, support, generosity, loyalty, mutuality, constancy, understanding, and acceptance.” The friends I called upon to provide their own experiences and connect me with others who had exposure to Chengdu’s LGBTQ community came from all arenas of my life: work friends from my marketing job, school friends from LSE, acquaintances I’d met at events in London, connections my Chinese teacher had facilitated, and so on. Some of them were queer friends, some were not, but the implicit structure of friendship—especially that of queer friendships—dedicates itself to this aforementioned honesty, respect, safety, and support. There is undeniable overlap with snowball sampling—and indeed, snowball sampling for non-heterosexual groups looks very similar (see Browne, 2005). Still, my adherence to and preference for friendship as method comes from the protective instinct; the emotional openness; the existence of or potential for connective longevity; the blurry lines between discussing things as researcher/participant, and friend/friend; and the organicness with which it fits in queer friendships, to begin with.

Data collection: The matter of distance

My data collection comes from a digital survey/interview combination of 24 participants. I intended to uncover the individual experiences of Chengdu’s queer, urban environment4. The survey was designed on Qualtrics, which I selected for its mobile-friendly user experience. Knowing many of my participants would be receiving the survey link over messaging platforms, I wanted to create a frictionless experience that allowed them to complete the survey from their phones without the temptation to abandon it. The survey was written in English and Chinese, translated first by myself, and then reviewed by a native speaker (one of my friends and participants) for errors. Participants could answer the survey in Chinese, and many did so. The survey was designed so that the participants could decline to answer a question if they wished. The survey platform only enforced the first question to be answered, which was the consent form. The purpose of the survey was to serve as a short introduction to my topic, ask the same questions to each participant to establish some baseline perceptions of the queer urban experience of Chengdu, and most importantly, to provide a launching point for the interviews. After the participants completed their surveys, I reviewed their answers and picked out details to generate individualized questions that would launch the interview. This jumping-off point gave the interview between sometimes-strangers a less halting beginning.

To cite Heckert (2016: 53): “When I try to get by, imagining myself capable of controlling situations, capable of living up to the masculine ideals of the university, I am less capable of listening openly to the stories of others, less capable of non-violent communication.” This project

4 To read the survey questions and flow logic, view Appendix.

was an experiment in non-control, due in part to the demands of navigating distance. Strategizing collaboration with my participants over this distance required my stepping back from ideas of masculine self-sufficiency and lone-wolfing.

Distance played a role between my participants and me in three significant ways. The first was geographic: many of my interviewees were, unsurprisingly, based in China, although I also had respondents from the US, England, and Singapore. The second factor of distance was a lack of face-to-face interaction. I never coordinated a face-to-face discussion with any participants while conducting this research. Even among the participants I was friends with before the project began, each interview took place on digital messaging platforms like WhatsApp, WeChat, and Instagram and exclusively involved messaging exchanges. I opted for a fully digital-messaging interview format because it minimized the impact of this geographic distance. Everyone who participated in my research was under the age of 37, making them digitally native enough to be familiar with messaging people over long distances and timezones with minimal friction.

Figure 1: Q2: How old are you?

I’d send them questions, and they’d answer when they could. The conversations felt organic to the format, were conducted fluidly, and thus we could avoid the awkward and time-consuming orchestration of schedules across continents for a Zoom call. It also benefitted me as the researcher because my Chinese proficiency isn’t at a level to be conducting real-time, face-to-face conversations about the nuances of LGBTQ life in Chengdu. The provision of messaging buffer time allowed me to translate the responses participants sent to me and gave me time to translate my own replies.“Mobile ethnography allows us to capture and to explore mobilities and interpret boundaryless dynamic settings” (Muskat, Muskat and Zehrer, 2017: 98). While I don’t claim to have carried out any genuine ethnography due to the time constraints, lack of participant-observation, and general removedness from my site and population of study, I was classically trained in cultural anthropology and see the value of applying ethnographic principles—specifically those of care and immersion—to this research. “[Digital ethnography] can help us take care of our research participants and include the pandemic times into our study” (Góralska, 2020: 47).

Thirdly, there was a distance, in some cases, of relative anonymity. Following the aforementioned philosophy of protection for participants made this project particularly unique. Though participants were primarily found friend-to-friend, I was sometimes working on an anonymized basis. What I mean by this is: in some cases, I wouldn’t be in conversation with my participants directly. Instead, an intermediary—our mutual friend—would facilitate the interviews in order to keep the participant’s contact information anonymous. I would send my questions through the friend, they would ask them of the participant, and answers were passed back to me along this chain. These friends who connected me to their networks also sometimes served informally as translators when conveying my follow-up questions to their friends. I knew that these mediating friends—all native speakers—would be able to word my questions in a more tactical and (if need be) censorship-sensitive way than I could have with my B1 Mandarin proficiency. The removed nature of this process in an already remote research project might raise questions of reliability, about whether something might have gotten lost in literal translation. My response is: perhaps something did get lost. But the value of conducting research in such a way lies in retaining the participants’ trust and assuring them of my respect for their safety and privacy. By employing a modified version of digital ethnographic principles and queering ‘friendship as method,’ I’ve done my best to use a sensitive and subjective approach to conduct sensitive and subjective research.

Other constraints and limitations

Methodology, thy name is flexibility. When I selected this topic for my research in December of 2021, I held onto the naive hope that China’s restrictive zero-covid policies, and its encompassing ban on foreign tourism, would be lifted by the summer of 2022. I wanted to conduct on-the-ground field research. Writing this in July and August, there’s a sardonic smile on my face. If anything, the policies only increased in intensity if the consequences of the spring-time lockdown in Shanghai are any indicator (Hale et al., 2022). This project, therefore, has been both a digital and entirely remote effort. In my research proposal (Velasco, 2022)5, I had initially arranged to supplement my interviews with a media review of Chinese social media sites to gauge the online sentiment of posts that came from and had to do with the LGBTQ community in Chengdu. Because of technical errors in the ethics review portal, my advisor did not receive notice that I had submitted my ethics proposal. This meant I did not receive approval for my research until the end of June. When I did, it was accompanied by the condition that if I was going to do a social media review I had to get GDRP approval from the LSE Data and Cybersecurity team. I emailed the team and never received further instruction from them despite follow-up. Given the delay in ethics approval, I needed to get on with data collection. Therefore, I forewent the social media review part of this paper to remain in compliance and avoid censure.

Research findings and discussion

The makeup of participants

When referencing the survey responses and interview content, all participants will be referred to by acronym to preserve their anonymity. Of 24 participants, 20 had lived in the city, and four had visited as tourists. Seven of those who lived in Chengdu had moved there, and 12 were born in the city.

Figure 2: Q3: Have you lived in Chengdu, or have you only visited Chengdu?

5 Part of my summative assessment for GY452.

16

All participants knew that Chengdu had an LGBTQ community, and 21 of 24 had been exposed to it.

Figure 3: Q12: Have you been exposed to the LGBTQ community in Chengdu? (Been to LGBTQ spaces, have friends who are LGBTQ, dated someone in the LGBTQ community, identify as LGBTQ yourself)

Importantly, in the survey and the interviews, I did not ask the participants to disclose how they identified on the LGBTQ spectrum, nor was identification as part of the LGBTQ community a requirement for participation. As Katz-Wise (2022) wrote in an article for Harvard Health: “Who are you today? Who were you a decade ago?” She identifies that fluidity can include changes in attraction, identity labels, and sexual behavior (ibid.). In Browne’s (2005: 50) research among non-heterosexual women, she stated:

“Employing personal networks meant that women did not have to define as ‘lesbian’, access gay media or support groups or regularly socialize on the gay scene in order to take part. Moreover, using these networks gave me access to women who would not answer advertisements and who, I believe, had to be asked individually.”

I wanted to avoid as much exclusion as possible within the bounds of my investigation. Given that I was researching the urban environment of Chengdu, the individual labels people used (if they used them at all) weren’t necessary. All that mattered was their impressions of and experiences with the LGBTQ community in the city.

The allure of acceptance; the conditionality of tolerance

Figure 4: Q16: Over the course of Chengdu's development, does it feel like there are more or fewer spaces for the LGBTQ community?

In my interview with RZ, they said: “One cafe, my favorite one, is owned by a lesbian. She and her girlfriend moved to Chengdu from Beijing especially for Chengdu’s LGTBQ friendly atmosphere” (RZ, personal communication, July 5, 2022). RZ also mentioned that they knew “many people who are from the LGBTQ community in other cities have moved to Chengdu” (Survey response from RZ). Based on my conversation with RZ, I wanted to connect with someone who owned an LGBTQ-friendly business. Through a very gracious mutual connection, I had the opportunity to survey and interview two individuals who are co-owners of an LGBTQ-friendly pub in Chengdu: ZY, and FB. This was an instance where the mutual connection protected their anonymity. After they filled out the survey, I sent my follow-up questions to them via WQ (also a participant), who then conveyed their answers back to me.

Through their surveys, I learned that both owners moved to Chengdu in part for its LGBTQ community (Response to Q11, see Appendix). FB had moved from Shenzhen, another Tier 1 city, before deciding to open this pub in Chengdu (FB, personal communication via WQ, August 8, 2022). These anecdotal responses about individuals who came to Chengdu from Tier 1 cities—either to start LGBTQ-friendly businesses or otherwise—are not quantitative enough to start making assertions, but they piqued my curiosity. They speak of urban-to-urban movement motivated by Chengdu’s higher degree of LGBTQ tolerance. China’s east coast cities, especially Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, are primary destinations for the country’s migratory population (Hornby, 2017). The state is motivated to disincentivize this:

Beijing has announced plans to combat what it calls “urban diseases” by capping its population and shrinking its footprint, wreaking havoc on the small businesses and migrants that throng its bustling streets. The Chinese capital will cap its population at 23m “long-term residents” by 2020 “and keep it at that level for the long term,” a city government notice said. (ibid.)

My participants’ testimonies highlight the potential of the LGBTQ community to assist with national urban development goals like siphoning urban pressure from Tier 1 cities like Beijing, as well as attract residents and new business investments per the Chengdu’s local urban development goals. They are also impacting the urban landscape by adding more LGBTQ-oriented spaces, creating opportunities for the community to gather, connect, and propagate an urban environment that supports the LGBTQ community from the bottom-up.

Figure 5: Q13: In your opinion, what is the attitude of the people in the city as a whole towards the LGBTQ community?

That said, Chengdu’s tolerance for these LGBTQ spaces seems to go hand-in-hand with a degree of discretion. Most of the participants I surveyed agreed that the city's attitude toward its LGBTQ community was at least neutral and primarily positive (See figure 5). Once we got into the interviews, however, that positivity turned out to be quite conditional. In my interview with RZ, I asked them if they would be willing to share the name of the cafe owned by the girl who came from Beijing, and they responded: “I don’t know if they mind me mentioning them, sorry, cuz they are not like openly stating that they have that LGBTQ label. But we (like the customers who hang out there) all know about that, and many customers who hang out there are also from the LGBTQ community” (RZ, personal communication, July 5, 2022). RZ mentioned that although several well-known businesses were owned and operated by LGBTQ individuals and served as spaces where LGBTQ individuals could congregate and feel comfortable, those businesses still felt like they had to exercise a degree of discretion because of a strained relationship with authorities (RZ, personal communication, July 5, 2022). "These past few years, mainstream ideology became more aggressive, and the LGBT community has been more marginalised...The secret to survival is avoiding noisy social and political advocacy” (AFP, 2020).

Survey questions Q18 & Q19 (Appendix) inquired if any LGBTQ spaces had closed or became inaccessible to the LGBTQ community and, if so, why. Two participants responded that it was “Mostly because of the restrictions from authorities” (Survey response from WQ) and that “The long-seated homophobia is still playing a role in the public perception. Even in Chengdu where the LGBTQ acceptance is deemed higher, covert homophobia is detectable” (Survey response from ZY).

The two LBGTQ-friendly pub owners had a lot to share about the contentious dynamic with authorities. FB spoke frankly about the realities: “My feeling is: it’s difficult, there are gains and disillusionment.” (FB, personal communication via WQ, July 20, 2022). In their survey, FB had spoken about the tightening strictures of the city. In response to the questions about whether or not Chengdu had more or fewer spaces for the community over the course of its development (Q16 & Q17, Appendix), they responded: “it was obvious that Chengdu's policies were also tightening. There was constant harassment during event[s], and many LGBTQ community events were forced to cancel or suspend/stop operations due to excuses such as the ‘pandemic’” (Survey response from FB). Authorities have meddled in their business affairs, canceling their launch event, calling them in to review their paperwork, warning them away from engaging with the LGBTQ community, and disrupting an event hosted at the space. “Many LGBTQ-friendly clubs in Chengdu are monitored nowadays. The pub owners were harassed and warned not to hold LGBTQ-related events - they previously also told me this is because the police would harass other clubs/pubs in that area one by one and warn the same thing” (WQ, personal communication, August 1). ZY spoke about the convoluted reactions to their space by authorities and the consequences.

“[Our shop] was formerly a massage shop with sex workers. When I was looking into the rental information for the shop, I was catching up with the raid and harassment of the massage parlor from the street police. When the police heard that we were going to rent a shop and open a bar, they were very welcome. But after opening the store, we still felt that the "red line" was still as frustrating as we had imagined. Seems like it's okay to open a shop, and we’d be welcomed, but don't get the lgbtq; these are not welcome. But when the store is open, they can't close us without any reason, so they will use indirect reasons such as the pandemic to obstruct us, which will also substantially affect our operating income and create a negative impact on our working environment. It’s uneasy.” (ZY, personal communication via WQ, July 20, 2022)

This particularly interesting story revealed a hierarchy of respectability that the authorities were operating on. An LGBTQ pub was better than a massage shop with sex work, but being involved with the LGBTQ community at all was still an offense and required censure, but not so much that the pub could actually be shut down for it. So instead, petty meddling tactics were used to complicate, frustrate, and obstruct them in carrying out their business. ZY continues, however:

Seeing other queer spaces surviving in the cracks will give me the confidence to try the same. Before opening, we also found some other queer space managers to learn their operational experience. After opening, we also got to know more and more queer space managers. "How to deal with censorship and harassment" and "How to continue to operate while serving the community" have become topics that we often exchange experiences and feelings about. (ZY, personal communication via WQ, July 20, 2022)

This network of space and people bolsters everyone within it, providing insight and advice that help one another survive and serve a city that still holds pitfalls and stigma for the LGBTQ community.

On whose authority?

In the summer of 2021, one of the largest coordinated crackdowns on the LGBTQ community occurred when LGBTQ WeChat university groups were shut down across the nation without warning or reason. Many interpreted this as a sign that the central government, which once had a stance of fickle but ambivalent “no approval; no disapproval; no promotion” toward the LGBTQ community (The Economist, 2017), has revitalized aggression and suppression towards the community based on a culture war of sorts. “Some LGBTQ people have blamed the crackdown on the incorrect impression that homosexuality is a Western import into China, and groups supporting gay rights are liable to infiltration by foreign forces” (Westcott and Jiang, 2021). I learned from our mutual contact WQ that the pub owners’ space started with wanting to be a place for people, especially women, to come, gather, and share experiences. “In recent years, the idea that feminism and LGBTQ equality are all products of Western ideology and their mere existence in China will destroy society has been widely shared, and as Beijing warms to the idea of assigning domestic discontent to meddling by foreign powers, their voices are being amplified” (Yuan, 2021). When Wei (2007) was conducting his research on gay Chengdu in 2004-2005, one of his participants recounts his impression of the relationship that local authorities like police have with the LGBTQ people in Chengdu versus other cities like Beijing:

The local culture somehow helps explain the loose attitude of the government because all government officials are living in this city. They grew up in a more tolerant culture...Cities in north China are usually quite conservative. If a man’s homosexuality was exposed to the public, his life would be totally fucked up. In Chengdu, if these cops think it would not bring any extra interest, or cost too much – for example, the [gay men] might charge them for blackmailing him – they may choose to quit this. (Wei, 2007: 575-76)

Even with the city’s historic character of tolerance, the dynamic between authorities and the community has devolved, with permissions narrowing and ambivalence hardening into more politically-motivated antagonism that results in the symbolic violence of making LGBTQ spaces inaccessible. Top-down cultural clampdowns manifest themselves in the urban environment not only in the shuttering of businesses like we’ve seen with MC Club, or the harassment we’ve seen with my participants, but also making investment into organizations that support these values increasingly difficult. The 2017 Overseas NGO Law implemented by the central state makes foreign investment—especially in the arena of civil society—fraught, to say the least.

“INGOs previously working on sensitive issues now lack local sponsors and have been forced to cease operations or withdraw from China” (Fu and Dirks, 2021: 3). They go on to discuss the impact of the central state clamp down on LGBTQ groups: “The Overseas NGO Law had already hit many LGBTQ groups in China hard, depriving them of access to foreign funders (ibid.: 4).

“Given that new urban forms are throwing up all sorts of new societal tensions, questions arise about the changing nature of urban politics in China and the specific spaces through which such politics are manifested” (Jonas, 2020: 706). The city-region is never wholly independent from its nation, and even at the height of China’s urban entrepreneurialism, “City regions also develop[ed] in part as a result of politics. They are shaped by national policies in different ways, and in turn, they enter into national political and social life in a variety of ways that are often not apparent to the naked eye” (Storper, 2013: 10). The consequences for the LGBTQ community are made manifest as more restrictive policies at a national level are brought down to the city-region. Before the pandemic, Chengdu’s LGBTQ community was drawing tourists (Ellwood 2018; AFP 2020), residents (Wei, 2007), and investment (Chen et al. 2019). During the pandemic, as ZY vouched, the community still drew urban-to-urban movement:

“Chengdu is now experiencing a period of development of a young service industry. With the implementation of new concepts such as official ‘Internet celebrity city’ marketing and community building, and the arrival of young people (consumption power) who have fled from first-tier cities after the epidemic. To that extent, Chengdu is a very suitable city to open a small store” (ZY, personal communication via WQ, July 2022).

The ‘Internet celebrity city’ is largely driven by organic social media engaging with Chengdu’s reputation Chengdu never included its LGBTQ-friendliness in its official branding, which, as we’ve evaluated, was a crucial part of its urban entrepreneurial strategies as a locally driven city-region. Instead of its official branding, the city’s reputation—largely digital—is the sustaining force for how people encounter Chengdu’s LGBTQ community. When talking to the participant NZ, who was not part of the LGBTQ community but had gone to Chengdu, they said they were aware Chengdu had an LGBTQ community before visiting. I inquired how they became aware, and they responded:

Mainly from the internet, and social media, I always see posts related to the LGBTQ group...the majority [of posts] I see are people sharing their own or others’ lives/lifestyles...it’s more of an awareness through the posts that the LGBTQ group exists in this city and there are quite a lot of people living in Chengdu who are from this group. (NZ, Personal communication, July 14, 2022)

Sassen (2004) wrote about the dynamics between globalization, global cities, and
new information and communication technologies (ICTs). She asserted that “of particular interest is the possibility that local, often resource-poor organizations and individuals can become part of global networks and struggles” (Sassen, 2004: 650). Therefore, “Global cities are, then, thick enabling environment...these cities help people experience themselves as part of global non-state networks as they live their daily lives” (ibid). In China, especially with the central state’s censorship of all major messaging and media platforms, I would argue that it’s very challenging to find an ICT option that is genuinely a non-state network. Nevertheless, through these communication channels and bottom-up information networks, Chengdu’s reputation for LGBTQ-friendliness has spread without the structural enablement of city branding. “The growth of online communities alongside physical venues has helped LGBT people in Chengdu to build connections, representation, and visibility” (Qian, 2016). Several participants sent me social media accounts, screengrabs, posts, videos and more related to how they followed Chengdu’s LGBTQ community. The accounts were from influencers, individuals, informal documentaries and vlogs, and most pertained to Chengdu’s queer scene and issues of LGBTQ acceptance. Importantly, it wasn’t just people who lived in Chengdu who were attuned to and interactive with its social media presence. In this way, a multi-directional form of queer support exists—from outside and within the city, from influential people and everyday individuals, businesses and customers. The reputation of Chengdu as a comparatively LGBTQ-friendly city is thus circulated, upcycled, reaching beyond the city and resulting in a circular dialogue. City branding is one-directional: from city officials (and their marketing partners) to a specific audience with the agenda to “increase inward investment and tourism, create competitive advantage and boost city image” (Björner, 2013: 204). Reputation, in comparison, is more democratic, bottom-up, and continuous in its evolution. It is also almost essentially exclusionary of power influences, since larger businesses and government entities are, for the most part, not contributing to the conversation on the LGBTQ community.

“Broadcasts on social media have been a positive influence on the perception of the LGBTQ community, and are usually calling for equality and the understanding of LGBTQ. Usually influencer account, but also individuals. LGBTQ is usually sensitive content on Weibo, so I would say that fewer corporate accounts are posting such content” (WZY, personal communication, July 3, 2022).

Since I was unable to confidently carry out a social media review given the aforementioned restrictions on my research ethics process, this paper can only suggest that more research on the reputation-building effect of social media content oriented around Chengdu’s LGBTQ community would greatly benefit our understanding on how the community negotiates itself in the digital realm alongside the physical and sustains a multi-directional sense of queer support, especially in the context of increased cultural clampdowns from the central state.

City-regionalism changes hands

After marketing itself internationally to get ahead in the inter-urban competition, Chengdu found another angle: “China’s western hinterland has long been seen as a low-cost manufacturing hub and a source of migrant workers for coastal cities. But the city of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in the west, is seeking to change that perception, casting itself as a high-tech investment zone and a pivot point to Eurasia” (Clover, 2016). By reframing its strategic position to the central state, it has become ‘China’s gateway to the West,’ supporting its One Belt; One Road initiatives: “‘Thirty years ago we were following in the footsteps of the coastal cities but now with One Belt, One Road it’s the other way around — they’re following us,’ says Liang Qizou, the deputy head of Chengdu municipal finance department.” (ibid.). This has resulted in the central government lavishing the Chengdu-Chongqing economic region with billions in investment: “Chongqing and Chengdu in China’s southwest have released plans to fund 160 projects worth 2 trillion yuan (US$314.1 billion) next year as part of a twin-city economic belt, after spending 93.4 billion yuan in 2020” (Nulimaimaiti, 2021). This interplay between local aspirations and the national agenda items echoes the sentiments of Miao (2019: 512): “Urban planning, a manifestation of state intervention in private decision-making.”

“Just three decades ago the world was dominated by strongly centralized states, with public policies generally being decided top-down by politicians and technocrats located in national capitals” (Rodriquez-Pose, 2008: 1030). It feels as if China’s approach to city-regionalism has just passed the hover point and is now swinging back to that nationally-oriented end of the spectrum. The state is increasing its stake in Chengdu in order to activate its its top-down policies and priorities through the city-region, grabbing the wheel away from locally-directed development decisions. “In response to this growing recognition that city regions are fountainheads of power and influence, [China is] now pursuing political rescaling projects” (Yang et al., 2021: 2). This is seen in how the state is directing more of the city-region’s land use for both One Belt; One Road initiatives, and treating it as an urban base for the development of China’s other western provinces (Nulimaimaiti, 2021). There is increased national attention on the city, which can only be considered an enabling influence on how the city authorities increased aggression towards the LGBTQ community in recent years. Jonas and Moisio’s (2018: 364) paper conducted “an investigation of the different geopolitical processes that align city regionalism with the interests of the state.” Chengdu’s marketing itself more to the national and less to the international in this way looks like local governance using the urban as an opportunity to display proof of politics to the central state. “Cities are often treated as staging platforms where national urban policies are articulated and enacted” (Pow, 2011: 48).

However, Pow complicates the impulse towards ‘methodological nationalism’ (2011: 49) that is prevalent in Chinese urban studies, and which we must be cautious of falling into. He says not to succumb to the thinking that “the state functions as the ultimate decision-maker, regulator, and participant in the urban economy, notwithstanding pressures from globalization and the decentralization of administrative and fiscal power from the central to local levels” (ibid.). Even as the central state has increased in influence and power in recent years, it is not entirely omnipotent. Similarly, the beneficiaries of a more locally-driven, entrepreneurial version of city-regionalism, from international investors like Apple and Intel in the industrial parks down to businesses like those of the pub owners I interviewed and the cafe of the lesbian couple who moved from Beijing aren’t just passive actors in this: “any attempt to centralise the governance to the city region is apt to face resistance from those vested interests in prior” (Scott, 2019: 570). Methods of resistance are restricted, as Jonas (2020: 706) noted: “given the hitherto powerful role of the state in land assembly and exchange, the capacity for ‘growth coalitions’ to organise and to resist state intrusion in local policy processes is attenuated.” But they are existent, and they are what have created a more radical, bottom-up system of queer support.

Conclusion: arrangements and alliances

“Chengdu has always been open-minded and welcoming to different cultures and people” (Survey response from YY); “Chengdu is thought to be inclusive, Chengdu people are also very chill and like to follow the trend” (Survey response from NN); “The city is highly tolerant and culturally tolerant, so it’s very open...it’s normal to be respected to a large extent” (Survey response from SMX). Again and again, respondents spoke to the city’s own history and seemingly innate character of comparative tolerance. As my investigation and previous literature demonstrate, Chengdu already had the foundations of a tolerant society and even had its own endogenous gay identity that was separate and adopted before the tongzhi identity, which originated in Hong Kong, became the dominant identifier (Wei, 2007: 572, 574).

Despite this, the top-down cultural tightening is souring the dynamic between authorities and the LGBTQ community in Chengdu. LGBTQ businesses have been closed, made inaccessible, or harassed. The changing dynamic of China’s city-regionalism sees more and more urban development decision-making power transfered back into the hands of the national party-state. As the city-region is being used more and more as an instrument of furthering national goals, and migrating further away from the entrepreneurialistic strategies it used in at the height of inter-urban competition, it is doubtful that the antagonism which manifests in the urban space politics of acceptability—like closure or harassment of LGBTQ-friendly spaces—will be overcome in the immediate future. The state’s desire to assert control over civil society (Fu and Dirks, 2021) is a national goal it can implement through the medium of city-regionalism. However, the momentum the city has generated over the past decades of selling itself, intertwining with the global, and staying true to its character of comparative tolerance makes me hopeful. The community’s innate edifices of support will come into play, as they already have:

It is the community's awareness of its own vulnerability that empathizes with the operation of queer spaces. With the complex of protecting themselves and the space, and the trust and love for the queer space, everyone spontaneously recommended it to their trusted partners. Therefore, we have a lot of "returning customers" and new friends brought by repeating customers, and gradually expand the "circle" of this space. (ZY, personal communication via WQ, July 20, 2022).

“The recipe for survival, Matthew [an activist from the NGO Chengdu Rainbow] says, is ‘making small progress’ rather than big political and social statements that rattle China's hyper-sensitive authorities” (AFP, 2020). I don’t believe it’s fair to demand overt displays of activism from Chengdu’s community in the face of the current circumstances. To quote Audre Lorde, respected queer, black, feminist activist: “It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare” (Lorde and Sanchez, 2017). A perfect example of this small progress while navigating the tetchiness of the cultural clampdowns comes from ZY:

Our pub is an overtly ‘gender-friendly’ themed space. We will make such statements in public places such as WeChat public accounts; at the same time, the offline, indoor space is decorated with rainbow elements, and gender-related books, manuals, and gender-related posters will also be displayed. We hope that people who walk into the bar will understand our intentions with a little attention. As the existence of offline queer space is facing force majeure obstacles in China, although we have made it publicly [queer], we still need to consider the wording when making public expressions (such as WeChat official accounts), such as not directly using ‘LGBTQ,’ ‘feminist rights,’ and use the strategic term ‘gender-friendly.’ ‘Gender-friendly’ is not, in my opinion, a second-order statement, but a more inclusive, more united, more comprehensive, and ‘radical’ principle I adhere to on gender/gender issues). (ZY, personal communication via WQ, July 20, 2022)

This explanation demonstrates how their pub furthers a more ‘radical’ principle of inclusivity and unity, serving the community's needs while navigating the politics (and technical constraints) of suppression.

When we consider the urban future of Chengdu’s LGBTQ community, a factor that will likely make the LGBTQ community resilient (but not immune) to changes in the applied politics of city-regionalism is the fact that the community is considered to encompass the whole city. One of the questions in the survey (Q14, Appendix) asked “What kinds of places in the city do you associate with Chengdu's LGBTQ community?” Several times, the responses ran along the lines of “anywhere” (survey response from SPG), “everywhere” (survey response from MQ), “anywhere else you want to meet up” (translated survey response from SMX), “just anywhere with queer friends” (survey response from ZY), “every possible place” (survey response from VN). All said, ten responses included some variation of this answer. The city as a whole seems to be perceived as fair game. The urban socio-politics of China make it hard for a ‘gayborhood’ to emerge; under a more nationalistic form of city-regionalism where party-state goals direct development, that is not set to change. But this has resulted in an entire urban arena that is the domain of the LGBTQ community. Their survey responses indicated that the LGBTQ community felt comfortable being out in the city in the queer sense of ‘Out’; out as their LGBTQ selves, out with LGBTQ friends, out with their LGBTQ significant others. LGBTQ people are queering Chengdu as a whole with their presence. They’re in the malls, teahouses, and restaurants in the city center (WZY, personal communication, July 3, 2022); the independent bookstores, independent art spaces, live houses, and composite spaces (FB, personal communication via WQ, July 18, 2022); they are hiking, picnicking, or at the parks in the suburbs and mountains on the outskirts (ZZ, personal communication via WZY, July 3, 2022). It is very hard indeed to suppress something that’s already everywhere.

Appendix

Q1] CONSENT FORM for “Urban ambition in Chengdu, China: How the LGBTQ community impacts Chengdu’s urban development" by [Researcher]

同意书:“成都的城市野心: LGBTQ群体如何影响成都市的发展” (研究者:[Researcher]) PARTICIPATION IN THIS RESEARCH STUDY IS VOLUNTARY

本人参与本研究是自愿行为

By signing below, I indicate that: I understand the objective of this study is to discover more about the LGBTQ community in Chengdu. 我明白此研究目的是发现更多关于成都LGBTQ群体的情况。

I have been able to ask questions about the study and my questions have been answered to my satisfaction.
我能够问研究相关的问题，并且得到了满意的答复。

I consent voluntarily to be a participant in this study and understand that I can refuse to answer questions. I can withdraw from the study at any time up until August 1, 2022 without having to give a reason.

我自愿参与这项研究，并知晓我可以拒绝回答问题。我可以在2022年8月1日之前的任何时候无 条件退出研究。

I understand that the information I provide will be used for [Researcher’s] “Urban ambition in Chengdu, China: How the LGBTQ community impacts Chengdu’s urban development” MSc Dissertation and that my information will be anonymized.

我明白我提供的信息将用于[Researcher’s] 的 “成都的城市野心: LGBTQ群体如何影响成都市的 发展” 硕士论文， 我的信息将被匿名处理。

I agree that my anonymized information can be quoted in research outputs

我同意我的匿名信息可以在研究成果中被引用。

OPTIONAL: I agree that my name/social media handle (if relevant) can be used for quotes (contact [Researcher] directly to indicate you're okay with her using your name/handle)

非必选: 我同意我的名字/社交媒体账号(如果相关)可以被引用。(请直接与[Researcher]联系，并 表明您同意她使用您的姓名/账号)

For information please contact: [Researcher] // email: [Researcher’s email] 如果想了解更多信息，请联系 [Researcher] // email: [Researcher’s email]

[Signature box] —Page Break—

Q2] How old are you?

您多大了?

o 18–27 o 28–37 o 38–47 o 48–57 o 58–67 o 67+

—Page Break—

Q3] Have you lived in Chengdu, or have you only visited Chengdu? 您曾居住在成都，还是只是去过成都?
o Lived/住在
o Visited/去过
o Neither/不住在也不去过

Display This Question:
If Have you lived in Chengdu, or have you only visited Chengdu? 您曾居住在成都，还是 只是去过成都?... = Neither/不住在也不去过

Q4] How are you familiar with Chengdu?

您如何知道成都的?

________________________________________________________________

Display This Question:
If Have you lived in Chengdu, or have you only visited Chengdu? 您曾居住在成都，还是 只是去过成都?... = Lived/住在
Or Have you lived in Chengdu, or have you only visited Chengdu? 您曾居住在成都，还 是只是去过成都?... = Visited/去过

Q5] What years did you live in / visit Chengdu?
您在成都居住/旅游过哪几年? ________________________________________________________________

Q6] Are you aware that Chengdu has an LGBTQ community? 您知道成都有LGBTQ群体吗?
o Yes/是
o No/不

Skip To: End of Survey If Are you aware that Chengdu has an LGBTQ community? 您知 道成都有LGBTQ群体吗? = No/不

Display This Question:
If Have you lived in Chengdu, or have you only visited Chengdu? 您曾居住在成都，还是 只是去过成都?... = Lived/住在

Q7] Were you born in Chengdu or did you move there?

您是成都出生的还是后来搬到成都的? o Born in Chengdu/成都出生的
o Moved to Chengdu/搬到成都的

Display This Question:
If Have you lived in Chengdu, or have you only visited Chengdu? 您曾居住在成都，还是 只是去过成都?... = Visited/去过

Q8] Did you ever visit Chengdu because of its LGBTQ community?

您是否曾因为成都有LGBTQ群体而去成都旅行? o Definitely yes/是的
o Somewhat yes/有点是的
o Might or might not/也许

o Somewhat not/有点没有 o Definitely not/没有

Display This Question:
If Have you lived in Chengdu, or have you only visited Chengdu? 您曾居住在成都，还是 只是去过成都?... = Visited/去过
And Are you aware that Chengdu has an LGBTQ community? 您知道成都有LGBTQ群体 吗? = Yes/是

Q9] Did you become aware of Chengdu's LGBTQ community before, during, or after your first visit?
您是在第一次来成都之前、期间还是之后才了解成都的LGBTQ群体?
o Before/之前

o During/期间 o After/之后

Display This Question:
If Have you lived in Chengdu, or have you only visited Chengdu? 您曾居住在成都，还是 只是去过成都?... = Lived/住在
And Were you born in Chengdu or did you move there? 您是成都出生的还是后来搬到成 都的? = Moved to Chengdu/搬到成都的
And Are you aware that Chengdu has an LGBTQ community? 您知道成都有LGBTQ群体 吗? = Yes/是

Q10] Did you become aware of Chengdu's LGBTQ community before or after you moved? 您是在搬到成都之前还是之后才了解成都的LGBTQ群体?
o Before/之前
o After/之后

Display This Question:

If Have you lived in Chengdu, or have you only visited Chengdu? 您曾居住在成都，还是 只是去过成都?... = Lived/住在
And Were you born in Chengdu or did you move there? 您是成都出生的还是后来搬到成 都的? = Moved to Chengdu/搬到成都的

And Did you become aware of Chengdu's LGBTQ community before or after you moved? 您是在搬到成都之前还是之后才了解成都的 L... = Before/之前

Q11] Did you move to Chengdu because of its LGBTQ community? 您是否因为成都有LGBTQ群体搬到成都?
o Definitely yes/是的
o Somewhat yes/有点是的

o Might or might not/也许 o Somewhat not/有点没有 o Definitely not/没有

Q12] Have you been exposed to the LGBTQ community in Chengdu? (Been to LGBTQ spaces, have friends who are LGBTQ, dated someone in the LGBTQ community, identify as LGBTQ yourself)
您是否接触过成都的LGBTQ群体? (去过LGBTQ的空间，有LGBTQ的朋友，和LGBTQ群体的人 约会，自己认同LGBTQ)

o Yes/是 o No/不

Q13] In your opinion, what is the attitude of the people in the city as a whole towards the LGBTQ community?
在您看来，整个城市的人们对LGBTQ群体的态度是什么?
o Very positive/非常好

o Somewhat positive/有点好
o Neither positive nor negative 不好也不消极 o Somewhat negative/有点消极
o Very negative/非常消极
o Not sure/不确定

Q14] What kinds of places in the city do you associate with Chengdu's LGBTQ community?

您觉得LGBTQ群体会去城市中的什么地方聚会? ________________________________________________________________

—Page Break—

Q15] Over the course of Chengdu's development, do you think the city has become more or less accepting of the LGBTQ community? 在成都的发展过程中，您认为这个城市对LGBTQ群体的接受程度是越来越高还是越来越低? o Much more/多得多

o Somewhat more/多一点 o About the same/差不多 o Somewhat less/少一点 o Much less/少得多

o Not sure/不确定

Q16] Over the course of Chengdu's development, does it feel like there are more or fewer spaces for the LGBTQ community?
在的发展历程中, 您觉得LGBTQ群体的空间增加或减少?
o Much more/多得多

o Somewhat more/多一点 o About the same/差不多 o Somewhat less/少一点 o Much less/少得多

o Not sure/不确定 —Page Break—

Q17] Why do you think this is?
您觉得为什么? ________________________________________________________________

Display This Question:
If “Have you been exposed to the LGBTQ community in Chengdu? (Been to LGBTQ spaces, have friends who...” = Yes/是

Q18] Are there any LGBTQ places you're aware of that have closed or become inaccessible to the LGBTQ community?
您意识到哪些LGBTQ场所关闭或不向LGBTQ群体开放了?
o Yes/是

o No/不
o Not sure/不确定

Display This Question:
If “Are there any LGBTQ places you're aware of that have closed or become inaccessible to the LGBTQ c...” = Yes/是

Q19] Why do you think this is?

您觉得为什么? ________________________________________________________________

End of survey

Reference list

AFP (2017). Gay Chinese tourists flock to Thailand for fun, acceptance. [online] France 24. Available at:

https://www.france24.com/en/20171110-gay-chinese-tourists-flock-thailand-fun-acceptance [Accessed 26 Jul. 2022].

AFP (2020). Chengdu: China’s permissive ‘gay capital’ refusing to fold. [online] koreatimes. Available at: https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/world/2021/02/683_301741.html [Accessed 2 Apr. 2022].

Bell, D. and Binnie, J. (2004). Authenticating Queer Space: Citizenship, Urbanism and Governance. Urban Studies, 41(9), pp.1807–1820. doi:10.1080/0042098042000243165.

Binnie, J. (2014). Relational Comparison, Queer Urbanism and Worlding Cities. Geography Compass, 8(8), pp.590–599. doi:10.1111/gec3.12151.

Björner, E. (2013). International positioning through online city branding: the case of Chengdu. Journal of Place Management and Development, 6(3), pp.203–226. doi:10.1108/jpmd-03-2013-0006.

Björner, E. (2017). Imagineering Place: The Branding of Five Chinese Mega-Citiesx. pp.161–174.

Browne, K. (2005). Snowball sampling: using social networks to research non‐heterosexual women. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 8(1), pp.47–60. doi:10.1080/1364557032000081663.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.

CEIC Data (2020). Tourism Revenue: Domestic: Sichuan: Chengdu | Economic Indicators | CEIC. [online] www.ceicdata.com. Available at: https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/tourism-revenue-domestic-prefecture-level-city/cn-touris m-revenue-domestic-sichuan-chengdu [Accessed 30 Jul. 2022].

Chen, L. (2020). Chengdu jumps in global ranking. [online] global.chinadaily.com.cn. Available at: https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202008/24/WS5f4365a3a310736c2dea493a.html [Accessed 27 Jun. 2022].

Chen, S., Miao, H., Huang, Z. and Li, D. (2019). A $300 Billion Rainbow Economy Is Booming in the Middle of China. [online] www.bloomberg.com. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-18/chengdu-is-tapping-into-china-s-300-b illion-rainbow-economy [Accessed 8 Jan. 2022].

Clover, C. (2016). Chengdu casts itself as high-tech gateway of west China. Financial Times. [online] 18 Aug. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/896d896a-2d6e-11e6-bf8d-26294ad519fc [Accessed 1 Aug. 2022].

Devine, J. and Ojeda, D. (2017). Violence and dispossession in tourism development: a critical geographical approach. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 25(5), pp.605–617. doi:10.1080/09669582.2017.1293401.

Duggan, L. (2002). The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism. In: R. Castronovo and D.D. Nelson, eds., Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, pp.175–194.

Ellwood, M. (2018). How Chengdu Became China’s Most Inclusive City. [online] Condé Nast Traveler. Available at: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/how-chengdu-became-chinas-most-inclusive-city [Accessed 9 Jan. 2022].

Fu, D. and Dirks, E. (2021). Xi Jinping-Style Control and Civil Society Responses. China Leadership Monitor, [online] Fall 2021(69). Available at: https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/107927/1/Fu%20and%20Dirks_CLM_Sept %201_2021.pdf [Accessed 5 Aug. 2022].

Globalization and World Cities Research Network (2014). Classification of cities 2012. [online] Geography Department Loughborough University. Available at: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/microsites/geography/gawc/world2012t.html [Accessed 27 Jun. 2022].

Globalization and World Cities Research Network (2020). Classification of cities 2020. [online] Geography Department Loughborough University. Available at: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/microsites/geography/gawc/world2020t.html [Accessed 27 Jun. 2022].

Gong, J. and Liu, T. (2021). Decadence and relational freedom among China’s gay migrants: Subverting heteronormativity by ‘lying flat’. China Information, pp.1–21. doi:10.1177/0920203x211050319.

Góralska, M. (2020). Anthropology from Home Advice on Digital Ethnography for the Pandemic Times. Anthropology in Action, 27(1), pp.46–52. doi:https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2020.270105.

Gorman-Murray, A., Johnston, L. and Waitt, G. (2016). Queer(ing) Communication in research relationships: a Conversation about subjectivities, Methodologies and ethics. In: K. Browne and C.J. Nash, eds., Queer Methods and Methodologies. New York: Routledge, pp.97–112.

Hale, T., Li, G., Dempsey, H. and Olcott, E. (2022). Shanghai lockdown ‘will have a global effect on almost every trade’. Financial Times. [online] 7 Apr. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/572eae5f-d47b-4e1b-a7c2-be63bd45000a.

Heckert, J. (2016). intimacy with strangers/intimacy with self: Queer experiences of social research. In: K. Browne and C.J. Nash, eds., Queer Methods and Methodologies Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Science Research. Routledge.

Hennessy, R. (1994). Queer Visibility in Commodity Culture. Cultural Critique, 29(Winter), pp.31–76. doi:10.2307/1354421.

Hornby, L. (2017). Beijing’s migrants no longer welcome as city caps population. Financial Times. [online] 20 Apr. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/822e982c-1b40-11e7-bcac-6d03d067f81f [Accessed 1 Aug. 2022].

Hughes, H. (1997). Holidays and homosexual identity. Tourism Management, 18(1), pp.3–7. doi:10.1016/s0261-5177(96)00093-3.

Jiang, Y. (2018). 成都同志浴室:自由与自由的背面 [Chengdu gay sauna: the downside of freedom]. [online] www.163.com. Available at: https://www.163.com/dy/article/E0BF90PS051282AG.html [Accessed 7 Aug. 2022].

Jonas, A.E. (2020). China’s urban development in context: Variegated geographies of city-regionalism and managing the territorial politics of urban development. Urban Studies, 57(3), pp.701–708. doi:10.1177/0042098019898143.

Jonas, A.E.G. and Moisio, S. (2018). City regionalism as geopolitical processes. Progress in Human Geography, 42(3), pp.350–370. doi:10.1177/0309132516679897.

JONAS, A.E.G. and WARD, K. (2007). Introduction to a Debate on City-Regions: New Geographies of Governance, Democracy and Social Reproduction. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31(1), pp.169–178. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2007.00711.x.

Kanai, M.J. (2014). Whither queer world cities? Homo-entrepreneurialism and beyond. Geoforum, 56, pp.1–5. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.06.012.

Katz-Wise, S.L. (2022). Sexual fluidity and the diversity of sexual orientation. [online] Harvard Health. Available at: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/sexual-fluidity-and-the-diversity-of-sexual-orientation-20 2203312717 [Accessed 9 Aug. 2022].

Li, Y. (2018). Chengdu eyes becoming world-leading tourism destination - Regional - Chinadaily.com.cn. [online] www.chinadaily.com.cn. Available at: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/regional/2018-08/27/content_37293595.htm#:~:text=According %20to%20the%20city%20plan [Accessed 30 Jul. 2022].

Lorde, A. and Sanchez, S. (2017). A burst of light : and other essays. Mineola, New York: Ixia Press.

Luo, M. (2020). Sexuality, migration and family: understanding Jia and its impact on Chinese young gay men’s migration motives from a temporal perspective. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(3), pp.1–16. doi:10.1080/1369183x.2020.1821615.

Miao, J.T. (2019). Planning Particularities: Reinterpreting Urban Planning in China with the Case of Chengdu. Planning Theory & Practice, 20(4), pp.512–536. doi:10.1080/14649357.2019.1646923.

Muskat, B., Muskat, M. and Zehrer, A. (2017). Qualitative interpretive mobile ethnography. Anatolia, 29(1), pp.98–107. doi:10.1080/13032917.2017.1396482.

Nulimaimaiti, M. (2021). China’s Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle announces US$314.1 billion investment plan. [online] South China Morning Post. Available at: https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3159839/chinas-chengdu-chongqing -economic-circle-announces-us3141 [Accessed 23 Feb. 2022].

Oswin, N. (2014). Queer time in global city Singapore: Neoliberal futures and the ‘freedom to love’. Sexualities, 17(4), pp.412–433. doi:10.1177/1363460714524765.

Oswin, N. (2015). World, City, Queer. Antipode, 47(3), pp.557–565. doi:10.1111/anti.12142.

Pow, C.-P. (2011). China Exceptionalism? Unbounding narratives on urban China. In: T. Edensor and M. Jayne, eds., Urban theory beyond the West : a world of cities. London: Routledge.

Prager, S. (2020). In Han Dynasty China, Bisexuality Was the Norm. [online] JSTOR Daily. Available at: https://daily.jstor.org/in-han-dynasty-china-bisexuality-was-the-norm/.

Puar, J.K. (2002). CIRCUITS OF QUEER MOBILITY: Tourism, Travel, and Globalization. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 8(1-2), pp.101–137. doi:10.1215/10642684-8-1-2-101.

Qian, J. (2016). Chengdu, the Questionable Queer Capital of China. [online] SixthTone. Available at:

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1528/chengdu%2C-the-questionable-queer-capital-of-china [Accessed 25 Jun. 2022].

Reuters (2020). China’s domestic travel revenue likely to halve to $394 billion in 2020: report. Reuters. [online] 15 Sep. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-tourism-idUSKBN2660Q2 [Accessed 28 Jul. 2022].

Robinson, J. (2006). Ordinary cities : between modernity and development. London: Routledge.

Rodríguez-Pose, A. (2008). The Rise of the ‘City-region’ Concept and its Development Policy Implications. European Planning Studies, 16(8), pp.1025–1046. doi:10.1080/09654310802315567.

Roy, A. and Ong, A. (2011). Worlding cities : Asian experiments and the art of being global. Chichester, West Sussex ; Malden, Ma: Wiley-Blackwell.

Rubin, L.B. (1986). Just friends : the role of friendship in our lives. New York: Harper & Row. Sassen, S. (2004). Local Actors in Global Politics. Current Sociology, 52(4), pp.649–670.

doi:10.1177/0011392104043495.
Scholvin, S. (2021). Analysing gateway cities at different scales: From global interlinking and

regional development to urban branding. Geography Compass. doi:10.1111/gec3.12579.

Schuermans, N. (2009). J. Robinson, Ordinary cities : Between Modernity and Development.. London, Routledge, 2006, xiv + 204 p. Belgeo. Revue belge de géographie, [online] (1). doi:http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/8184.

Scott, A.J. (2019). City-regions reconsidered. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 51(3), pp.554–580. doi:10.1177/0308518x19831591.

Shaw, G. and Zhang, X. (2017). Cyberspace and gay rights in a digital China: Queer documentary filmmaking under state censorship. China Information, 32(2), pp.270–292. doi:10.1177/0920203x17734134.

Shi, C. and Tang, B. (2020). Institutional change and diversity in the transfer of land development rights in China: The case of Chengdu. Urban Studies, 57(3), pp.473–489. doi:10.1177/0042098019845527.

Shin, H.B. (2019). Asian Urbanism. In: Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Urban and Regional Studies, pp.1–10.

Storper, M. (2013). Keys to the city : how economics, institutions, social interactions, and politics shape development. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

The Economist (2017). Chinese attitudes towards gay rights. [online] The Economist. Available at:

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/06/05/chinese-attitudes-towards-g ay-rights [Accessed 2 Aug. 2022].

Tian, Y., Chen, Y., Zhou, M. and Zhao, S. (2021). Institutional Design and Incentives for Migrant Workers to Participate in Social Insurance in China: Evidence From a Policy Experiment in Chengdu City. Frontiers in Public Health, 9. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2021.736340.

Tillmann-Healy, L.M. (2003). Friendship as Method. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(5), pp.729–749. doi:10.1177/1077800403254894.

Velasco, T. (2022). ‘Symbolic violence and visibility: urban ambition and queer tourism in Chengdu, China’, Dissertation Proposal submitted for GY452, LSE, April 2022.

Wei, W. (2007). ‘Wandering men’ no longer wander around: the production and transformation of local homosexual identities in contemporary Chengdu, China. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 8(4), pp.572–588. doi:10.1080/14649370701568029.

Westcott, B. and Jiang, S. (2021). China’s LGBTQ community is fading from rainbow to gray. [online] CNN. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/09/china/china-pride-month-lgbt-weibo-intl-mic-hnk/index.ht ml [Accessed 27 Jul. 2022].

Weston, K. (1995). Get Thee to a Big City: Sexual Imaginary and the Great Gay Migration. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2(3), pp.253–277. doi:10.1215/10642684-2-3-253.

Wu, C. (2012). Homoerotic sensibilities in late Imperial China. London: Routledge.
Wu, F. and Zhang, J. (2007). Planning the Competitive City-Region. Urban Affairs Review,

42(5), pp.714–740. doi:10.1177/1078087406298119.

Yang, L., Chen, W., Wu, F., Li, Y. and Sun, W. (2021). State-guided city regionalism: the development of metro transit in the city region of Nanjing. Territory, Politics, Governance, pp.1–21. doi:10.1080/21622671.2021.1913217.

Yuan, S. (2021). LGBTQ in China lament ‘dark day’ after social media crackdown. [online] www.aljazeera.com. Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/13/china-lgbtq [Accessed 27 Jul. 2022].

Yue, A. and Leung, H.H.-S. (2016). Notes towards the queer Asian city: Singapore and Hong Kong. Urban Studies, 54(3), pp.747–764. doi:10.1177/0042098015602996.

Zhang, L. and Zhao, S.X. (2009). City branding and the Olympic effect: A case study of Beijing. Cities, 26(5), pp.245–254. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2009.05.002.