‘Good hard fuck’ made in China: a case study of Chinese semi-professionally produced gay porn

In recent years, a series of locally produced gay porn films under the brand name ‘Chitu’ has gained popularity among gay men in China. As all pornography, gay and straight, is still illegal in China, this phenomenon has notable cultural and political significance. Building on my nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in Chinese gay communities and subsequent textual analysis, this article attempts to use Chitu (arguably the first gay porn series in China) as a case study to investigate the representation of gay sexualities in China alongside an exploration of the perception of this representation. I unpack the production and perception of Chitu in relation to the notion of sexual citizenship and argue that the presence of Chitu celebrates a particular Chinese cosmopolitan gay sexual script.