Policing sexuality in digital China: moral panic and the reproduction of familial heteronormativity

This study employs netnography and critical discourse analysis to examine recent incidents on Chinese social media that triggered intense sexual moral panics. By analyzing public discourses alongside interventions from key power actors, such as state media and affiliated social institutions, we identify recurring mechanisms through which familial heteronormativity is reproduced in digital China. In these discursive events, women’s sexuality is nationalized as a matter of collective dignity; queer vulnerability is silenced through depoliticization while public homophobia is amplified; and gender and sexual nonconformity are pathologized as threats to familial social order. Both official media and dominant public discourses work in tandem to reinforce a familial, heteronormative sexual moral hegemony. By situating these cases within broader debates on moral panic, gendered fear, and sexual governance, this study shows how sexual morality in contemporary China is articulated and policed through the intertwined logics of family, nation, and social order.