Thu 12 June 2025 Police in China arrest female authors of homosexual novels in crackdown on 'boys love' fiction genre.
If convicted, they could be subjected to detention, financial penalties or even prison sentences.
Many of the targeted writers published their work on Haitang, a Taiwanese website (so WHY were the Chinese Polices reading Taiwanese websites??) popular with fans of boys love fiction — a genre that features romantic relationships between male characters, often depicting sex scenes.
Some of them have been documenting their experiences on Chinese social media.
A writer who goes by the pen name Sijindejin said she was served a notice in May to present herself at a local police station in Gansu province — about 970km away from her village in Chengdu.
Sijindejin, who says she grew up in a "poor village", bought the cheapest flight available and took her first plane trip to comply.
According to Chinese laws, police in any part of the country who claim they have received complaints about an individual can call them in for questioning.
Having only made 4,000 yuan ($857) after writing for years, Sijindejin said she never knew it could be a crime."
I thought I could write my way out of the orbit of my destiny, and I thought I was writing my future, but I didn't realise that that future pointed to prison," Sijindejin wrote in her social media post.
Another writer also summoned by police expressed her similar shock.
"I'd never expected this day to come, to be hit in the face with every word I've written in the past," the anonymous writer said in a post on social media platform Weibo in late May.
"I love each of my books, and I see the books and each of the characters in them as my children, even when they are called sinful."
Writers of the boys love genre are mainly female, and it appears many of the targeted writers are also university students unable to afford legal representation. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-12/police-in-china-arrest-female-writers-over-homosexual-novels/105403258