BlueCity has, so far, avoided a similar fate. In 2017, the Chinese government shut down another gay dating app, Zank, after accusing it of hosting pornographic content. “It’s trying to make sure the state will not mistake it as a gay activist organization. “I think that’s also the value provided by Blued, to provide better services to foster connections and enhance the well-being of the LGBT community.” “We understand that there are still challenges for the community, like in everywhere else in the world,” said Ma.
The LGBTQI movement has made progress in recent years, but advancements are often coupled with setbacks, like “the police detaining activists and shutting down events, censors removing online content, and policymakers snubbing calls for equality,” a 2020 report from the human rights organization OutRight Action International found. While China has expressed support for gay rights at the United Nations, it doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages and regularly censors media featuring queer people. “It’s trying to make sure the state will not mistake it as a gay activist organization,” said Chan. “Blued diluted the sexual elements of its business to promote itself as a health promotion platform.”īlueCity’s Chinese-language website rarely mentions terms like “gay” or “LGBTQI,” instead using coded language like “diversity” and “community” to gesture toward its marginalized user base. “Blued, even today, can still run a business in China because it mainly positions itself as a health promotion platform, rather than a gay platform,” said Lik Sam Chan, a communications professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and the author of The Politics of Dating Apps: Gender, Sexuality, and Emergent Publics in Urban China. Noel Celis/AFP/Getty ImagesĮmphasizing its health offerings has made it easier for BlueCity to navigate an often precarious political environment for LGBTQI organizations.
“Rather than shifting our focus, I would say I am happy that with technological advancement and more resources, we are able to develop and offer more services.”īaoli Ma, founder and CEO of BlueCity, China’s largest internet company geared toward LGBTQI people. “With a long history of serving the LGBTQ community, we have an unparalleled understanding of their needs and concerns,” BlueCity’s founder and CEO Baoli Ma told Rest of World over email, when asked about the new initiatives. Now, it’s expanding into health care technology more formally, by launching a digital pharmacy and internet hospital for Chinese men. Since its founding, BlueCity has operated an HIV-focused nonprofit and slowly embedded itself in the state’s public health initiatives to combat the virus. While it’s best-known for its dating services, BlueCity has succeeded domestically, in part, by positioning itself as an entertainment platform and sexual health company. After going public on the NASDAQ exchange in 2020, BlueCity expanded by acquiring Lesdo, one of the largest lesbian dating apps in China, and Finka, a social network for younger gay and bisexual men. Its main app is Blued, a location-based dating and livestreaming service for gay and bisexual men, with over 60 million registered users worldwide, bypassing Grindr last year in India, Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea, and China. But one Chinese company is thriving while doing both.įrom its Beijing headquarters, BlueCity has quietly built China’s largest internet company geared toward LGBTQI people, an online dating empire that rivals competitors like the U.S.-based Match Group. “It’s hard to run a sexual minority organization in China, and it’s also hard to run an internet company now,” said Chuncheng Liu, a PhD student at the University of California San Diego researching public health and the politics of algorithms in China.
The message came amid a wide-reaching government crackdown on technology firms, which caused many of their stocks to go into free fall.
In early July, Tencent suddenly erased over a dozen LGBTQI university groups from WeChat, sending an ominous signal about the future of queer activism that reverberated across the Chinese internet.