Boys Love is a fictional animated media genre depicting romantic relationships between two male figures. Image from zeroc0 via DeviantArt under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
China has launched a crackdown on so-called obscene online content with a mass arrest of erotica writers across the country who published their work on “Haitang Literature City”, an adult-content site hosted in Taiwan.
The censorship drill began when the public security police of Jixi County in Anhui Province arrested more than 50 writers in early 2024. Then, earlier this year, police authorities from Lanzhou City in Gansu Province revived the clampdown, which, to date, involves around 300 writers. Most of the arrestees are educated young women aged 20 to 30.
Taiwan-based Haitang Literature City
“Indecent and obscene content” has always been a target of online censorship in China. However, after Chinese President Xi Jinping established the upholding of “socialist core values” as a means to the country’s cultural security in 2013, all websites and platforms were required to tighten their censorship standards. Between 2015 and 2017, under a series of internet clean-up campaigns, the Chinese authorities shut down over 13,000 websites and compelled platform administrators to delete more than 10 million user accounts.
Another round of clean-ups took place between 2019 and 2021, which affected not only pornographic content but also subtle descriptions of sexual acts. Creative writing platforms, such as “Jinjinag Literature City” and “Qidian Chinese Network”, were forced to “uphold their social responsibilities” and ban erotica from their platforms.
“Haitang Literature City” is a simplified Chinese erotica platform featuring aesthetic Boys’ Love (BL) fiction as its primary focus. It was founded in 2015 and is hosted in Taiwan as an adult content site for users aged 18 and above in order to evade mainland Chinese internet censorship. Writers and audiences, primarily young women, must use a VPN to access the site. Subscribers must register an account and purchase a virtual currency called “Haitang coin” to access VIP content.
However, the site became the target of a crackdown in 2024. The security police from Jixi County in Anhui Province carried out a cross-regional operation. They arrested more than 50 writers, and many were charged for disseminating pornographic materials under article 363 of China’s criminal law, which scales the severity of the offence and sentence into minor (less than 3 years), serious (3–10 years), and especially serious (10 to life imprisonment).
As for the Haitang case, reportedly, for less popular writers who earned less than RMB 250,000 (approximately USD 35,000) from their writings, most received a jail term of less than 2 years with a 2-year probation period. But for popular writers, the sentence was up to 4–5 years.
One popular writer, Yunjian (雲間), had been writing on the platform for nearly 10 years and earned RMB 1,850,000 (approximately USD 257,000) from her works. Even though she had all her income confiscated and paid a fine of nearly 4 million Yuan, she still received a 4.5-year jail term. Writers who were unable to pay the fine received even longer sentences. Cijiu (辭奺), another well-known writer, was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison.
Many analysts believed that the police’s moves were driven by profit, as the cross-regional operation was executed by the police of Jixi County, a hilly and relatively poor region. The large number of fines could yield a substantial government income.
As a result of the crackdown, “Haitang Literature City” suspended its platform temporarily and removed its content and user accounts upon request.
Yet, the suppression continued. The latest round of crackdowns began in March 2025. This time, police authorities from Lanzhou City, Gansu Province, were in charge of the operation, and approximately 300 were arrested.
耽美文学再成“扫黄”靶子，中国多地写手遭跨省抓捕。兰州警方近期跨省“清剿”网络耽美文学写手，拘捕多名海棠文学网作者，涉及四川、江苏等地在校学生。部分写手仅因收取微薄稿费（如1000元左右）即被控“制作、传播淫秽物品牟利”，面临刑责，甚至失去研究生保研机会。… pic.twitter.com/HiwcRWSZQh
— 中国人权-Human Rights in China (@hrichina) June 12, 2025
Aesthetic Boys’ Love literature has once again become the target of an ‘anti-pornography campaign’; writers from across the country have been arrested. Lanzhou police have crossed their jurisdiction to ‘eliminate’ BL writers from the Haitang Literature Platform. Some of the arrestees are university students from Sichuan and Jiangsu. Some writers have only received as little as RMB 1,000, and they have been charged with ‘producing and distributing obscene articles for profit’. They have to face trial, and some have lost the opportunity to pursue their post-graduate education…
The Lanzhou police’s operation was less driven by profit and more by ideology. According to Radio Free Asia’s report, unlike the Anhui police, who drew a line between profitable and non-profitable writers when pressing changes, Lanzhou police regarded those who wrote for free as criminals and measured the severity of their crimes by calculating the number of views. An offender could receive a sentence of more than 10 years in prison if their work has reached 250,000 views.
Some lawyers criticised the heavy-handed law enforcement practice and offered legal aid to the erotica writers. Teacher Li, a popular overseas commentator and whistleblower, summed up the legal side of the issue on X:
一位愿意向海棠作者提供法律援助的律师博主说，该案的量刑畸重。她认为点击数达到一万次甚至五千次就要判刑的标准太紧。法律立法的时候还是纸媒时代，1万的印刷量的确不小。但互联网普及后，阅读量的标准没有更新，用旧规来判动不动就会判个几年甚至十年往上。
A lawyer willing to provide legal aid to Haitang writers said the sentences are very severe. If their work had more than 10,000 or 5,000 views, they would face charges. The law was written when printing was still a significant distribution channel, and 10,000 copies was considered a lot. However, the distribution standard had not been updated since the internet became popular. When applying the old rules, the offenders would likely receive a sentence of several years or even more than 10 years in jail.
Why is Boys’ Love erotica being targeted?
In addition, some also pointed out that the definition of “obscenity” in the Chinese law is outdated and biased towards heterosexual males.
BL, a fictional media genre originating from Japan and depicting homoerotic relationships between male characters, is very popular among Chinese manga fans. Unlike gay erotica, BL works, either manga or fiction, are created by female writers for a female audience, who are not necessarily homosexual. Feminists, like Li Yinhe, pointed out that BL is a subversive genre for women to explore their sexuality beyond gender stereotypes, as BL relationships eschew expressions of dominance and reproductive function.
As the subcultural genre has gained popularity in recent years, several online fiction works have been adapted into mainstream TV dramas, such as The Untamed 陳情令 (2019) and Word of Honor 山河令 (2021). While the public has accepted homoerotic expressions, the law and the conservative patriarchal nationalists still consider the genre immoral. Here is an example of a conservative view circulating on X:
海棠文学城以耽美之名行淫秽之实，大量的淫秽内容污染了涉世未深的青少年心灵，甚至把创作和传播这些淫秽作品当成赚钱的工具，这种违法牟利行为必须制裁，法律必须亮剑。这次对海棠文学城执法既捍卫了网络空间的清朗生态，更传递出违法犯罪都将付出应有代价。
Haitang Literary City uses aesthetic BL erotica as an excuse to spread obscenity. It produces a large amount of obscene content and pollutes immature young people’s minds. It even makes a profit out of the creation and dissemination of these obscene works. Such an illegal profit-making behaviour must be sanctioned; the law must be used as a sword. The police operation targeting Haitang Literary City not only defends the clear ecology of cyberspace, but also conveys the message that criminals will pay a due price.
However, what the nationalists described as “corrupted villains” are actually educated young women coming from relatively poor families with few resources to defend their rights. Teacher Li has collected some of the arrested writers’ testimonies and shared them on X. Here is one example:
…從未想過第一次坐飛機是去蘭州的公安局… 我寫故事，最初只是因為喜歡，家裏缺錢，父母天不亮就要出門… 我想攢一點錢替家裏分擔壓力。在海棠寫了幾年，也只有零星的讀者，直到那些無人問津的文字累計被點擊了三十多萬次，賬戶裏四千多块的稿費成了我犯罪的證據… 在網上搜索法律規定，看見點擊在250,000以上可能面臨十年以上的刑期時… 原來人真的會在晴天裏結冰。
…I never imagined that my first aeroplane ride would be to the Lanzhou Public Security Bureau… I started writing stories because I enjoy doing so. My family was short on money, and my parents had to leave the house at dawn… I wanted to earn some money to share their burden. I wrote in Haitang for a few years, but I only had a few readers. Then, those unattended words had accumulated more than 300,000 clicks, and the USD 4,000 or so in my account became the evidence of my crime… When I searched the internet, I read that the law stipulates that with 250,000 hits or more, you may face a prison sentence of ten years or more… It turns out that people really do freeze on sunny days.
The mass arrest of Haitang writers is one more example of the clampdown on feminist values and LGBTQ+ identities in recent years, as China has faced a sharp decline in its birth rate.
