Actually, it is still disturbingly clear: within mainstream society, you simply cannot come out. It would be the end of your career. Can you imagine a Communist Party member being openly gay? There is no way. It would simply be dismissed as '"indecent." Such argumentation would be widely accepted: one should not even try to change the value system of the Party on this subject.

At the very least this includes teachers, employees of state-owned enterprises, and of any kind of government institution. Hardly any of the advocates of LGBT rights within academia are (known to be) gay either. We know many government officials do visit nightly meet-ups, but during the day the façade of a stabile marriage is essential to their careers. Of course, there are exceptions. I have a lesbian friend who works for the government and got away with opening up to her (also female) boss. She even got time off to go visit her girlfriend. There are always exceptions to the rule, and luckily their numbers seem to be growing.

There are some cross-over figures with close ties to the authorities, such as Tsinghua scholar Zhang Beichuan. He focuses on AIDS-related issues, but his voice is very important for the entire movement.

As for homophobia more generally, it depends on where you are, but the relatively high tolerance levels that online polls reveal are much lower when homosexuality occurs in one's own family and conflicts with expectations for grandchildren or societal status.

A lot of it has to do with education as well. Taiwan passed a gender equity education act in 2004 prescribing "sexual orientation and gender temperament" to be incorporated in the entire curriculum, starting from preschool. In mainland China, during the few hours of sexual education in middle school, the word "sex" is hardly mentioned, let alone equal treatment of LGBTs. On the contrary, educational materials in which homosexuality is described in discriminatory terms still regularly appear. Legal improvements cannot be separated from the social environment.

What do you consider realistic priorities for improving the legal position of China's LGBTs and why is this change not taking place? 2001, when homosexuality was removed from the list of mental diseases, was a long time ago.

In China, there is a huge divide between what is happening in terms of academic research and activism and the official stance, which still tends to deny reality and considers many of the legal barriers LGBTs face as something alien to contemporary Chinese society. A standard response would be: "Very interesting research, but China does not have this problem." But we do: same-sex couples buy property together, want to be able to adopt a child, get into legal conflicts, become ill, have inheritance issues to sort out, and so on. It is just that, unlike here in Europe, there is no legal framework for these situations.