In recent years, China’s LGBTQ+ community has been swept up in the Chinese Communist party’s broader crackdown on civil society and freedom of expression. In May 2023, a well known LGBTQ+ advocacy group in Beijing announced it was closing due to “unavoidable” circumstances. Last February, two university students filed a lawsuit against the education ministry after they were punished for distributing rainbow flags on campus.
Ironically, I think censoring these kinds of innocuous influencer types is probably a counter-productive move by the CCP (as far as their fascist goals go) compared to silencing actual out-and-out political activists.
I think it’s easier for people in China to accept the silencing of active political dissidents and shrugg them off as “probably extremists”, but censoring a popular entertainment figure forces people in China to ask the question “Why?” which only really leaves the one conclusion; that they’re living in a techno-fascist state. That’s the question the CCP doesn’t want people asking.