Am I missing the joke here? Your God damn right I’m going to be up eating the delicious breakfast buffet when I’m on vacation. And your also right that I’m going to sleep until lunch on the weekends so I don’t need to expend effort for breakfast. I literally can’t see doing this any other way.

I’m pretty sure that’s what these places are. At the end of the article it says people are mostly there for collaboration and office space, but that some people are there for fake work. Whenever I see articles about China now, I have to question the validity of them. Are there people there for fake work? Clearly, but that’s not what that office is for according to the article itself. And you’d have to ask the simple question, does that happen in other nations as well? Absolutely. But for some reason, news about China, they’ll only admit that at the very end. Suspicious

It is isn’t it? I actually talked about that further in the thread. What’s up with that? I’m actually curious about it since well I’m not LGBTQ+ but I’m always interested in understanding more. It’s strange to me that women would prefer lesbian porn films as well as queer films. It doesn’t make sense to me, but statistically that’s what we find. I’d love for someone to explain this to me.

Edit: Also yes, I can agree it doesn’t show queer support, but it does show ambivalence. After all, it’s the government censors that are letting it through, and they aren’t LGBTQ+. So, they absolutely do not understand it’s targeted at women.

Whooo boy that’s a tough topic. So I’m sure what you’re realizing is that LGBTQ+ issues in China isn’t a government thing. The government doesn’t care. The families though, oh god, I mean if we’re going to say there’s oppression in China, it’s from the families. IF you’re lucky and have a good family, great. If you’re not, no one will help you.

So, of course your best bet is to find extended family that accepts you. This is how there’s a thriving LGBTQ+ community in China. And leads to all the things I was talking about where grandparents over rule parents, but it can also be aunts or other family members. OR and importantly OR because of how guanxi works, you can also find groups of like minded friends who take you in and help you get past these things.

I’m not here to tell you it’s a great system or it works well. Abuse IS a huge problem there. However, in the western mind it’s all tied to an oppressive government, it’s actually not. It’s a deep cultural issue that is only recently coming to light, and frankly if I’m honest it will get buried just as quickly with a few more rights for people, such as gay civil unions. It’s how China listens to the voice of the people. I know this is confusing, in the west people think of the voice of the people as a direct voice such as democracy. In China it’s complicated. In a weird way, everyone in China is free to do whatever they want, as long as you have the guanxi to back it.

Edit

I feel like I should add this has been the way the Chinese government has done things since imperial times. China isn’t communist, a better way of looking at them is they’ve returned to imperial China. It’s bad in many ways as you’ve noticed, parental abuse is an insanely huge problem there. On the other hand, it’s how they handle the rich getting too rich. It doesn’t matter how rich you are if you’ve destroyed all your guanxi, as Elon Musk is discovering.

Parent in this case means relative. It’s an Asian societal thing, nothing can happen without an agreement with the family as the family unit is more important than the individual. This is actually a thing in Japan as well.

So, you might be thinking couldn’t I just fake it. And the answer is yes and happens all the time. Here’s a Times article on it. It’s some what biased since it’s an American paper, but it has the issues fairly correct. The problem is calling it the black market isn’t exactly correct. It’s usually forged documents pretending that you have family consent.

https://time.com/6261675/china-transgender-hormones-black-market/

Of course, if you actually are alone and have no family, then you don’t need approval. However, that doesn’t really happen in China as they find your relatives for you, it’s actually what the police stations around the world are actually about. It’s a way for overseas Chinese to find familial contacts so they can proceed with whatever documentation they want.

Edit

Actually, hilariously if you get into a civil union with your boyfriend, they can act as consent for your trans gender therapy. So in that situation if you’ve already found a partner it’s totally fine and everyone gets whatever they want. This is actually part of a way China promotes marriages in order to try to get that birth rate up. It just happens they don’t have laws for gay people so it just default applies.

Edit 2

If you’re now also thinking couldn’t they just get the grandparents to do it? The answer is also yes. In fact, like 50% of Chinese dramas are about literally this. The grandparents going over the parent’s head and making decisions for their grandchildren. It’s quite a big deal in China. And I’m not talking about LGBTQ+, it’s literally every part of life. China isn’t so much a nation of individuals as it’s a nation of families and the families make all the decisions. It even leaks up to the political level. It’s confusing, but it all makes more sense if you study Chinese culture. This is what guanxi is about. It’s not exactly nepotism.

So good news on that, that’s changing too. The courts find gender conversion therapy illegal, although there’s no specific law against it. You can get gender affirming surgery as well as hormone therapy, though not all options. However, they do have a parental consent requirement. Though if you understand Chinese culture, that makes a lot more sense than if you do not. Like I said, with everything in China, not terrible, not great.

Uh, you can have a civil union in China if your gay. They also have tons of what they call boy love movies. Additionally, there’s gay bars in every major city in China. In fact, Chengdu is known as the gay capital of China.

The issues are they do have are, you can’t show kissing in those movies and they don’t allow parades anymore. Also, no legal protections for discrimination, though all discrimination laws apply. So while you can’t say they fired you because your gay, you still have protections that they can’t randomly fire you without cause and being gay isn’t a cause.

Here’s an article about what I am talking about.

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-relationships/article/3114633/lgbtq-people-china-picture-mixed-global-report-finds

Not terrible, also, not great. That kind of described China as a whole though so take that how you will.

Edit

Here’s a list of boy love films if your interested.

https://trakt.tv/users/133dle/lists/rainbow-cn-china-boys-love-bl-gay?sort=released%2Casc

Surprisingly they’re more popular with women as opposed to men. Not entirely sure why.

I’m a bit confused. Are you saying lots of Europeans are saying they stand with China besides the far right?

And was proven to work by China as that’s literally what they did. But I think the fear of looking like they side with China is making them not do it. The taboo of standing with China is that taboo amongst western nations that they would sacrifice their health and wealth to not do it.

Well, sure. But none of them would be enough pressure to change the US direction. Also, China already basically used all of them.

Rare earth being the most famous one. But much like sanctions on Russia this will always be leaky.

Trade with nations on USA’s hit list. Russia being the best example. But China already does trade with them. They’d have to start to break EU and UN sanctions to do more, and while upsetting USA would be nice, they don’t want to create a tear with Europe.

Stopping Chinese students from going to the US. This would be a longer play, but forcing a reverse brain drain would benefit China to US detriment. However, Trump is already doing this for free.

Creating actual alliances, if this were to happen it would put USA on the back foot as they’d have many nations they would suddenly have to contend with. However, this goes against China’s very ethos. China believes alliances are problematic and creates divisions in the world. This is why China has no allies. And to China’s point, look at what Trump just did to his allies.

I could go on. Other options are too weak to make a dent or Trump is already giving it to China for free. It’s hard to make an effective move when your opponent is throwing golden opportunities at you. To be honest, China mostly just wants everything to play out and see where the pieces lay.

China absolutely has the power over the US to make the US feel pain. The problem is any use of that power would make China feel just as much pain. It would be self-immolation. The three main things China can do are.

Cut all exports. Ironically, Trump did that to himself so that’s why Trump capitulated.

Sell all US assets. Not just bonds. Of course this would absolutely destroy China’s economy, so a no go.

Nuclear war. But this is the end of humanity, so also a no go.

So China has the power, but would need to basically be willing to end life as we know it, or do what Trump did to himself. Again, ironically that was the one thing that didn’t involve total annihilation and Trump willingly committed seppuku. So weird.