Zihao (Joseph) Zhou, a PhD student in the Department of Sociology, recently published two complementary articles that collectively theorize the precarious state of homosexual citizenship in contemporary China. Published in Citizenship Studies and Sexuality & Culture, these studies move beyond legal paradigms to examine how sexual citizenship is simultaneously denied by state governance and renegotiated through digital media.
In his article “Denial of homosexual citizenship in China: media governance through censorship and misrepresentation,” published in Citizenship Studies, Zhou investigates the mechanisms of state control. Moving beyond the view of censorship as mere erasure, he theorizes a "feedback loop" between censorship and misrepresentation. The study argues that authoritarian media governance operates through 'delegated enforcement' and ideological framing, which actively constructs homosexuality as incompatible with national identity while enabling the state to strategically avoid direct blame. This process not only renders gay identity invisible but structurally denies "cultural homosexual citizenship" by creating a self-sustaining cycle of symbolic exclusion.
Complementing this focus on governance, his second article, “Chinese Mediated Homonormativity: Cultural Citizenship(s) and the Politics of Popular Gay User-Generated Content,” published in Sexuality & Culture, turns to the community's response within the digital sphere. Examining popular gay user-generated content (UGC), Zhou proposes a new theoretical framework: "Chinese mediated homonormativity.” Unlike Western concepts of homonormativity which often center on assimilation, Zhou argues that in the Chinese context, it is a "dual-source formation" shaped by platform affordances. It functions outwardly as a struggle for conditional recognition against censorship, and inwardly as a mechanism of stratification. The study critically analyzes how algorithmic logics amplify specific "good-quality” aesthetics, thereby creating a hierarchy of belonging that empowers some while marginalizing others.
Together, these publications offer a comprehensive look at the "double bind" of Chinese homosexual citizenship: constrained from above by a resilient regime of media governance, and stratified from within by the precarious politics of digital visibility.
You can read the full articles via the following links:
Citizenship Studies: https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2025.2542184
Sexuality & Culture: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-025-10488-0