30 million gays will marry

2004-08-19 12:40

Shanghai - At least 80% of China's estimated 30 million gays have already married members of the opposite sex or will do so in the near future, health officials said on Thursday.

Of the 30 million, around 20 million are men and 10 million women, Zhang Beichuan, an expert with the Heilongjiang Provincial Health Bureau, said.

With a population of 1.3 billion people Zhang estimates that about two to five percent of adult men are gay in China, while lesbians account for half the percentage of homosexual males.

Despite a clear preference for same-sex partners most of them will marry at some point, succumbing to the pressure of long-standing conservative cultural traditions that stress the importance of family, experts said.

Still seen as disgusting

While 25 years of sweeping economic changes have helped bring much greater freedom and choice in personal affairs, China's gays are still a marginalised group, the Shanghai Youth Daily quoted Cong Zhong, a health professor at Beijing University, as saying.

"Chinese people see gay activities as something disgusting and against the Chinese moral and ethic," said Cong, who blames widespread ignorance on weak educational levels.

China has never officially published a study on the country's gay community and it was only in 2001 that homosexuality was removed from the list of mental disorders.

"Chinese authorities usually adopt a silent attitude on many issues such as homosexuality, prostitution and drug users because they see these problems as shameful," said Zhang, who hopes to break new ground with a survey later this year.

The unprecedented study will focus on homosexuals and homosexual HIV carriers as part of efforts to contain a worsening Aids problem.

- AFP