Original Report | them
A Wave of Arrests in China Is Targeting Gay Erotica Authors
At least 30 writers of danmei, or “boys’ love” fiction, have been arrested on obscenity charges in the last four months.
by Samantha Riedel
2025-6-30
At least 30 writers of danmei, or “boys’ love” fiction, have been arrested in China on obscenity charges in the last four months, lawyers told the BBC this week.
The targeted authors’ danmei novels — a genre which can range between male-male romance stories and erotica, some of which have been adapted into hit series like The Untamed — were published on Haitang Literature City, a popular danmei platform with servers in Taiwan. A lawyer representing one writer told the BBC that of the 30 Haitang users arrested since February, nearly all were women in their 20s; some were released on bail, but others were reportedly still jailed, and “many more” were said to have been summoned for questioning.
“I’ll never forget it,” one writer recalled in a post on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, describing her arrest: “being escorted to the car in full view, enduring the humiliation of stripping naked for examination in front of strangers, putting on a vest for photos, sitting in the chair, shaking with fear, my heart pounding.”
Ye Bin, a lawyer representing four recently arrested women, told the New York Times that his clients had each earned between $27,000 and $56,000 from their writing in total; all were fined double their earnings and given suspended sentences, he said.
Chinese authorities have reportedly stepped up policing of danmei content in recent years, with at least 10 people receiving prison sentences in Anhui province last year for posting allegedly “obscene” content on Haitang. A 1997 law banning “obscene” content in media allows “depictions of sexual acts” in “artistic” contexts, but authorities have nevertheless targeted danmei creators with criminal charges for years, some receiving prison sentences of up to a decade.
That trend has reportedly escalated since 2021, when the Cyberspace Administration of China announced “Operation Qinglang,” a crackdown on online content perceived to have a “negative impact on teenagers.” Police have especially escalated operations targeting Haitang since last June, researcher Dr. Liang Ge wrote in March, leading to fractured trust within the danmei fan community itself.
“It’s not just about writing obscenity, pornography, erotic or queer romances,” Dr. Ge told the Times this week. “Social media users feel that there is increasingly little space for them to breathe freely.”
One lawyer told the BBC that the danmei arrests are “classic ‘offshore fishing,’” a colloquial Chinese term describing police who arrest and fine people who live outside of their jurisdictions. “[A]s long as [police] claim a local reader was corrupted,” the charges may stick, the lawyer explained. Four authors told The Economist that they were recently approached for questioning by police hailing from faraway provinces; the magazine also reported that last year’s Anhui arrests resulted in a $2.3 million windfall for Anhui police. Chinese Premier Li Qiang promised to take “resolute steps to prevent unauthorised cross-jurisdictional and profit-driven law enforcement” in a report to the legislature this March.