Chinese social media shutdown of LGBT student groups highlights growing nationalist backlash against 'Western' influences | South China Morning Post

The closure of dozens of LGBT student organisations' WeChat accounts this week may be the result of a larger Chinese nationalist backlash against perceived Western influences, according to cultural academics. "There is a tendency in China for some people to relate homosexuality and LGBT people to Western lifestyles or capitalistic, bourgeois decadence, so this was in line with a moral panic," said Hongwei Bao, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Nottingham and specialist in queer politics in China. "Especially now, there's tension between China-West relations, so there is likely to be a heightened sense of nationalism…