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The rapid growth of the World Wide Web in China is helping to lift the lid on one of its most sensitive topics - gay relationships.

In China's conservative environment, many homosexuals still marry and do not dare to admit their sexual orientation to family, friends and colleagues.

However, the growth of gay-oriented Web sites has provided an anonymous, virtual meeting place for people with Internet access to connect and open up. The sites also offer opportunities to read about the treatment of gays on the mainland, news, AIDS facts, and other information.

About 150 sites have sprung up in the past few years, in a nation where one Beijing-based sociologist specialising in gay issues, estimates there are between 36 million and 48 million gay people in a population of about 1.26 billion.

'Homosexual Web sites have been casting a great influence over gay people, especially those in China,' said Wu Ping, who runs a gay bar in Shenzhen.

'The Internet provides a channel for us to express ideas as well as feelings,' he said.

Mr Wu has launched Web site szjy.net. Last week more than 200 people signed in, checking forums to meet people, reading reports on gay issues and checking job listings. People can buy gay-related VCDs, ranging from 70 yuan (about HK$65.60) to 140, from the site.

'With the development of the Internet, Chinese gay men are opening up to the homosexual culture. In the past, we were living in the underworld, but now more are walking out from the closet,' Mr Wu said.

Hong Kong activist To Chung-po at gay rights group Chi Heng Foundation, said the Internet had helped gays, isolated in towns and cities across China, feel as if they were 'not the only sick person in town'.

Brian Leung runs www.gay

station.com.hk, a Web site that broadcasts Cantonese radio shows such as Queer Family and Girlie Show over the Internet for gay listeners. He said the Web helped foster discussion.

'You can maintain your anonymity on the Net. It's a platform for people to speak,' Mr Leung said.

Mr To said before the Internet 'the only way to meet other gay people was in public toilets and parks in cities in China'.

'Now, people can change cruising places very quickly,' he said after a recent visit to the mainland.

Mr Wu said people could fake their characters over the Internet, which meant some gays preferred going to bars. 'But the Internet provides an alternative to those dirty toilets, where gay men usually meet,' he said.

Gay Web sites have also helped increase tolerance in the general population, amid a new government-linked openness about homosexuality. In April, the Chinese Psychiatric Association, set up by China's government, removed homosexuality from its catalogue of mental illnesses. Until 1993, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said it was a mental disorder.

All Web surfers in China can read about that and other issues, including AIDS and its prevention, online. According to China Internet Network Information Centre, mainland Internet users numbered about 26.5 million in June.

'Now, most Chinese know being homosexual is not a mental illness or a twisted thing. If there was no Internet, homosexual people in China would be still living in the dark and being misunderstood,' Mr Wu said.

Although most people agree such Web sites are accessible and have not been blocked by the Chinese Government, it is difficult to tell how many gays on the mainland have been able to reach the Internet and its vast array of information.

'I think 60 per cent of gay men carry the habit of surfing Web sites. Some of them surf the Net at home, some of them at 'Net bars',' Mr Wu said.

Mr To said the number of gay surfers was not very big. 'The Internet population within the gay community is still very small because a lot of people in China do not have a computer or the Internet at home,' he said.

But as mainland Internet usage grows, more gays will become connected - electronically and emotionally.



Gay-oriented sites trigger more open discussion on Aids and homosexuality in mainland