Wild reason China is throwing female writers in jail

Young women in China are being thrown behind bars at staggering rates for one X-rated reason.

China is jailing authors of steamy online sexual fantasy. It turns out they’re mostly young women.

“Indecent and obscene content” is just one brick in Beijing’s Great Firewall of internet censorship.

But Chairman Xi Jinping’s push to impose “traditional Chinese values” on his Marxist Communist society has some of his censors in overdrive.

The online erotica clampdown has so far this year netted 300 writers in the city of Lanzhou, Gansu Province, alone.

Most are educated, middle-class women in their 20s.

They’ve been charged with generating pornography for profit.

Punishment includes jail terms and hefty fines, scaled according to the severity of the offence. Minor authors can expect a prison sentence of up to three years.

Particularly popular writers can be jailed for life.

At the heart of the latest obscene content crusade is the Taiwan-hosted Haitang Literature City website.

It hosts erotic fiction from registered authors. These receive a commission based on the number of times their stories are viewed by paying subscribers.

“Haitang Literature City is a simplified Chinese erotica platform featuring aesthetic Boys’ Love (BL) fiction as its primary focus,” a report by the human rights organisation Global Voices states.

China is cracking down on erotic fiction. Picture: iStock

“Unlike gay erotica, BL works, either manga or fiction, are created by female writers for a female audience, who are not necessarily homosexual.”

The popular erotic genre, dubbed danmei, is receiving special attention among Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censors. Analysts report access to international sources of mainly male-dominated pornography remain mostly open.

“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 birthrate,” Global Voices regional editor Oiwan Lam adds.

The mass arrest of Haitang writers is one more example of the clampdown on feminist values. Picture: Andres Martinez Casares-Pool/Getty Images

‘Corrupted villains’

“What the nationalists described as “corrupted villains” are actually educated young women coming from relatively poor families with few resources to defend their rights,” Lam states.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) relates the story of a 20-year-old woman caught up in the censor’s net.

She was reportedly detained shortly after being notified of acceptance to a local university. That university immediately revoked her admission.

“I wrote just to save money to see the snow-capped mountains in western Sichuan, but I didn’t expect the result to be a notice of expulsion,” the unnamed woman told RFA.

Another author said she was removed from her home while still in her pyjamas: “Every word I wrote in the past has now become a chain that handcuffs me.”

Beijing’s drive against pornography was a core component of Chairman Xi’s 2013 promise to impose “cultural security” on what he saw as Chinese values.

People walk past a poster of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Picture: Greg Baker/AFP

Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers assemble during military training. Picture: Andrew Beatty

Some 13,000 China-based pornographic websites and 10 million erotic social media accounts were shut down between 2015 and 2017 alone. A second campaign, between 2019 and 2021, extended the ban to soft-core erotica. Even implied sex acts were outlawed.

This prohibition simply drove fans underground.

Haitang Literature City emerged in Taiwan as a means to circumvent the mainland’s censors.

“Writers and audiences, primarily young women, must use a VPN to access the site,” Global Voices states. “Subscribers must register an account and purchase a virtual currency called “Haitang coin” to access VIP content.”

But Chinese censors began tracking down the site’s users last year. Anhui Province authorities arrested more than 50 writers, with charges mainly reflecting the income the authors had earned.

However, Gansu Province has chosen to adhere more closely to “Xi Thought”.

“Lanzhou police regarded those who wrote for free as criminals and measured the severity of their crimes by calculating the number of views,” Lam writes. “An offender could receive a sentence of more than 10 years in prison if their work has reached 250,000 views.”

Young Chinese women are being jailed. Picture: iStock

A crime of ‘cultural harm’

Article 363 of China’s Criminal Law Code states that producing and selling obscene material for profit is a crime. But RFA reports Gansu Province has decided to define even “free publication” and “micro-rewards” (including tokens limited to a specific website) as profit.

And it is eagerly pursuing offenders in distant provinces to impose particularly hefty fines.

Lanzhou media analyst Liu Yang told RFA that popular culture has always been a focus of CCP regulation, “especially works involving homosexuality”.

But he says the sudden crackdown against danmei (BL) erotica hasn’t been explained.

“I really don’t understand them. Are they emphasising political correctness, or are they crazy about money?” Liu said. “The Public Security Bureau is now short of money, and arresting people has become a way to make money.”

But Chairman Xi’s quest for cultural purity provides both a motivation and an excuse.

“Ideological slogans have returned, often vague and high-sounding, but rarely translated into practical policy,” China analyst Ma Junjie writes in The Diplomat.

“Political power has become more centralised, with term limits and collective checks removed … Academic and people-to-people exchanges have declined. Information walls are growing higher.”

The consequence, he explains, is that nobody knows what is being encouraged and what is punished.

Anhui Province authorities have arrested more than 50 writers. Picture: iStock

Gansu Province has chosen to adhere more closely to “Xi Thought”. Picture: Ken Ishii – Pool/Getty Images

“The state demands discipline, unity, and ideological conformity – while also asking for innovation, entrepreneurship, and social resilience. But creativity doesn’t thrive in fear. Trust doesn’t grow in ambiguity. And people – whether bureaucrats, academics, or business owners – cannot function productively if the rules keep changing, or worse, if no one really knows the rules anymore.”

But discipline and productivity are taking on new meaning.

Especially for women.

“Feminists … 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,” Lam writes. And that, in the context of a dramatically falling birthrate, is interpreted by Beijing as a threat to Chinese “cultural security”.

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @jamieseidel.bsky.social