Jones 2007 Imagined Comrades

Imagined Comrades
and Imaginary Protections:

Identity, Community and Sexual Risk
Among Men Who Have Sex
with Men in China
Rodney H. Jones, PhD
City University of Hong Kong
ABSTRACT. This paper describes the recent development of identity

and community among gay men in China. It focuses both on the ways
emerging forms of gay identity relate to larger ideological and discur-
sive shifts within society, and on the ways these new forms of identity
and community affect situated social interaction among gay men them-
selves. In particular, it addresses the question of how these emerging
forms of gay identity and gay community affect the ways gay men in
China understand the threat of HIV and make concrete decisions about
sexual risk and safety.
Among the chief tactics used by gay men in China to forge identity and
community involves appropriating and adapting elements from dominant
discourses ofthe Party-State and the mass media. This strategy has opened
up spaces within which gay men can claim "cultural citizenship" in a soci-
ety in which they have been heretofore marginalized. At the same time, this
Rodney H. Jones is Assistant Professor, Department of Language and Communica-

tion, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong. Correspondence may
be addressed: Department of English and Communication, City University of Hong Kong,
Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong.
Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 53(3) 2007
Available online at http://jh.haworthpress.com
© 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
doi: 1O.1300/J082v53n03_06 83
84 JOURNAL OF HOMOSEXUAUTY
strategy also implicated in the formation of attitudes and social practices

that potentially increase the vunerability of Chinese gay men to HIV in-
fection. doi:10. 1300/J082v53n03_06 [Article copies available for a fee from
The Haworth Document Delivery Service: i-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address:
<docdelivery@haworthpress.com> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com>
© 2007 by The Haworth Press. inc. All rights reserved.]
KEYWORDS. China, discourse analysis, gay men, HIV/AIDS, sexual

behavior
INTRODUCTION
Communities are to be distinguished not by their falsity/genuine-

ness, but by the style in which they are i~agined. (Anderson, 1991)
Safer Sex as a "Community Practice"
Among scholars of the sexual behavior of men who have sex with
men in the West the concepts of "community affiliation" and "sexual
identity" have become central to discussions of HIV risk behavior and
vulnerability, and many successful AIDS prevention programs in these
settings owe their success, in part, to strong community networks and
a strong sense of community identity. For Watney (1990), "safer sex"
is more than just a behavior; it is essentially a "community practice"
which grows and is reinforced in the context of a shared sense of identity.
Numerous studies, both quantitative (e.g., Kippax et aI., 1993) and
qualitative (e.g., Dowsett, 1996), have explored the relationship be-
tween risk behavior and whether or not individuals identify themselves
as "gay" and are integrated into a "the gay community." Some have
found "gay community affiliation" to be a predictor of successful be-
havior change (Chapple, Kippax, and Smith, 1998; Gold, 1995; Hays
and Peterson, 1994; Kippax et aI., 1992). Others, however, have found
claiming membership in "the gay community" to have little influence on
high-risk sexual behavior (e.g., Ratti, Bakerman, and Peterson, 2000) or
to even exasperate it (Gold, Skinner, and Rosenthal, 1994).
One reason for the variability in studies of this type lies in the inher-
ent ambiguity and context specific nature of the concepts of "gay iden-
tity" and "gay community" and the difficulties in operationalizing such
Rodney H. Jones 85
concepts in social science research, especially survey research (Dow-

sett, 1996; Gatter, 1995). Indeed, any study seeking to understand the
relationship between "gay community affiliation" and sexual risk be-
havior invariably involves the invention of a "gay community" on the
part of researchers (Kendall, 1995), inventions which often prove irrele-
vant when imported to different settings. The constellation of sexual,
cultural and political practices isolated by Kippax and her colleagues
(Kippax et aI., 1992, 1993, 1994) to define "gay community attachment"
in Australia, for instance, is difficult to apply in a setting like China, not
just because of constraints on social organizing and public discourse re-
sulting in the relative lack of "gay organizations," "gay media" and a
clearly defined "gay political project," but also because of different cul-
tural conceptions regarding the relationship between the self and the
collective (Scollon and Scollon, 1995) and different notions about the
uses of community affiliations in social life (Li, 1997), in short, a differ-
ent way of imagining community and identity. Research on male homo-
sexual communities in different cultures (e.g., Carballo-Dieguez and
Dolezal, 1994; Parker, 1986; Tan, 1995) make abundantly apparent that
notions of sexual identity and community are contingent on a whole
host of social and economic factors and policed by knowledges devel-
oped in very specific historical and economic circumstances (D'Emilio,
1993; Evans, 1993).
Since the mid-1990s, cities in China have been witnessing "a verita-
ble explosion of people who call themselves gay" (Rofel, 1999: 451). It
would be a mistake, however, to view the emergence of homosexual
identity in China through the perspective of Western "gay liberation
discourse." First of all, the forms of marginality faced by gay men in
China are very different from those in the West, mostly taking the form
of pressures to conform to Confucian roles within the family rather than
the widespread physical violence against gay men and legal prohibitions
against "sodomy" seen in places like the United States. Second, because
of different cultural and political circumstances, the strategies used
by these emerging communities in China are often quite unlike the indi-
vidualistic "identity politics" (Sampson, 1993) pursued by Western gay
activists.
What it means to be gay in China today is a complex issue which in-
volves the appropriation and mixing of a wide variety of symbols, histo-
ries and social practices. It sometimes involves taking up the language
of "global gay identity" (Altman, 1996, 1997), sometimes involves bor-
rowing from more local ways of communicating about sex and sexuality,
and sometimes does n<;>t get said at all (Hodge and Louie, 1998). Each of
these ways of "being gay" carries different meanings, signaling affilia-

tion to different communities (local, national and transnational) and dif-
ferent "storylines" of gay identity. Moreover, each of these ways of being
or social positions imagined around sexual practices (Weeks, 1985) is
staked out against a matrix of other overlapping identities: Urban, rural,
young, old, Northern, Southern, rich, poor, "civilized" and "uncivilized."
Through different ways of "being gay," people occupy not just particu-
lar sexual positions, but also social positions visa vie the larger culture(s)
in which they participate.
This complex emergence of gay identity and gay community is tak-
ing place against the backdrop of a growing HIV epidemic in China, one
in which men who have sex with men are increasingly vulnerable (Wan,
1999). This paper aims to explore the strategies Chinese men who have
sex with men use, both individually and collectively, to overcome mar-
ginality and build communities that are regarded as legitimate by main-
stream society, and the effects these strategies have on sexual practices
and sexual risk. The data comes from participant observation among
two communities of men who have sex with men, one in Beijing, and the
other in the southeastern city of Fuzhou conducted between 1997 and
200 I. The focus of the observation was on how participants talked about
their sexual identity and community affiliations in relation to dominant
political and social discourses and institutions and how patterns of so-
cial organization around ideas of "community" or group membership
affected HIV-related risk behavior (Jones, 2001).
Inventing and Imagining Communities
Understanding the relationship between HIV vulnerability and "com-

munity" requires a way of conceptualizing "community" that avoids the
individualistic bias of Western scholarship and the emotional and politi-
cal overtones imposed on the term by Western activists. Further, it re-
quires a way to understand the process through which communities are
invented (by non-members) and imagined (by members) in particular
sociocultural settings, contingent on the cultural resources available and
the sets of power relations operative in those settings. Finally, it requires
that we examine how communities function in the lives of members both
on the collective macro-political level and on the micro-political level
of individual social (and sexual) interaction.
Recent work in psychology (Wertsch, 1991, 1997, 1998a, b) and lin-
guistics gives us a method to bridge the analytical gap between abstract
Rodney H. Jones 87
notions of "community" and what people say and do in situated encoun-

ters in particular sociocultural settings. In linguistics this approach has
come to be known as mediated discourse analysis (Norris and Jones,
2005; Jones, 2001; Scollon, 1998, 2001). It sees all human interaction
as mediated through cultural tools, both physical and semiotic, which
individuals appropriate from the larger sociocultural environment. All
cultural tools have embodied within them certain "affordances" and
"constraints" based on the history of their use. At them same time, when
individuals and social groups appropriate them into specific situations,
they adapt them, mixing them with other tools in ways which create new
patterns of affordances and constraints.
Chief among these "cultural tools" for Wertsch and his colleagues are
what he calls voices, the words, phrases, narratives and "ways of speak-
ing" (Gumperz and Hymes, 1986) that we borrow from the sociocultural
environment. Wertsch derives the concept of voices from the work of
the Soviet literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1981, 1986). According to
Bahktin, we never speak in a voice that is purely our own. Instead, we
"borrow" and "ventriloquate" the voices of others, we "rent" meaning
and then give it back to the community according to the protocols it es-
tablishes (Clark and Holquist, 1984). Every utterance is Izeteroglossic,
in that it may contain many different voices at once, and dialogic, as
each voice exists in response to, in "dialogue" with other voices.
Theses voices and other cultural tools are the building blocks of iden-
tity and community. According to Wertsch (1998b), groups coalesce
not so much around common purposes or activities as around the com-
mon use of particular cultural tools. Developing the framework provided
by Anderson (1991) in his study of the "imagined community" of the
nation-state, he divides communities into three different types, or more
accurately, three stages of imagination: communities of practice, im-
plicit communities, and imagined communities. The fist refers simply
to groups of people who "do things together" (Lave and Wenger, 1991)
but do not necessarily form social identities around these activities.
The second comes when shared tools, voices and practices transcend
space and time and provide the potential for groups to grow into "sym-
bolic" entities by creating representations of themselves around these
tools and practices. The third level, that of imagined communities, those
groups who have, to varying degrees, come to be recognized as "commu-
nities" by members (and by nonmembers) through producing and circu-
lating representations of themselves.
For Wertsch, then, the process of imagining "new identities" is car-
ried out through the appropriation and mixing of discursive resources
88 JOURNAL OF HOMOSEXUAliTY
already available in the sociocultural setting. All emergent communities

must imagine themselves against the backdrop of the voices produced
and controlled by dominant communities and institutions which create
inventions of them.
The process of community formation, then, takes place both within
and outside of communities, both through representations members
construct of themselves and representations constructed of them by oth-
ers. Imagination and invention exist in a symbiotic relationship: Imag-
ining myself requires both that I invent a "serviceable other" (Sampson,
1993) and that I to some degree "buy into" the inventions that the other
has made of me.
de Certeau (1984), as well, sees the formation and maintenance of
communities chiefly as a matter of strategic maneuvering against a
field of dominant discourses. Marginalized groups imagine communi-
ties through what he calls tactics, the "mutually implicated play of lan-
guage and practice" (Anagnost, 1997: 57) through which social actors
resist the technologies of social control embodied in the cultural tools
they have available to them and create new possibilities for social identity
within the landscape of dominant discourses. They are processes through
which social actors, "navigate among the rules (and) play with all the
possibilities offered by traditions ... (thereby) short circuiting economic,
social and symbolic divisions" (de Certeau, 1984: 54).
The essence of tactics is intertextuality (Fairclough, 1992), or what
de Certeau calls conjunctures, the strategic mixing of voices from dif-
ferent discourses in ways which alter, distort or invert the patterns of
constraints and affordances embodied in those discourses. They are, to
again quote de Certeau (1984: 39), "manipulations oflanguage relative
to occasions and are intended to seduce, captivate, or invert the linguis-
tic position(s) ofthe interactants," involving the juxtaposing "of diverse
elements," which opens up "cracks" in the technologies of control (37).
This concept of tactical maneuvering in social life is not unfamiliar in
the Chinese philosophical tradition, with advice on tactics catalogued in
a number of Chinese classics, in particular the Thirty-Six Stratagems,
SunTzu's Art of War, the Yi Ching (Book ofChanges) and Laozi's The
Way ofPower (Gao, 1991). As in de Certeau's conceptualization of tac-
tics, the stratagems elucidated in these works tend to operate not through
opposition (as in Western, individualistic practices of identity politics),
but rather through various means of drawing strength from one's enemy.
Chew (1995) calls such tactics "aikido politics." Central to this brand
of interactional politics, she says, is the process of membershipping
or "riding on the back of power" (202). It is "a subtle and gentle device
Rodney H. Jones 89
(that) concentrates on bringing the power under control by blending

with it" (206).
A good example of akido politics is the increasingly widespread use
of the term tongzhi ("comrade") both by men who have sex with men
themselves and by the general public to refer to homosexuals. What
makes this tool particularly useful is its indeterminacy-the multitude
of voices that speak through it. On the one hand it claims cultural be-
longing, binding its users to a community of compatriots which, in par-
ticular, is distinct from Western gay men. On the other hand, it points
outward to other communities of gay men in Hong Kong and Taiwan
(where the usage was coined) and beyond to global gay identities. The
word strategically mixes the voices of kong-tai (Hong Kong and Taiwan)
modernity (Barme, 1999) Party loyalty and "dissident irony" (Barme,
1999). Its "accent" is simultaneously serious and ironic, playful and ear-
nest. Which of these voices is made salient depends on when the term is
used, by whom and to whom.
Dominant Voices
Emergent communities begin to imagine themselves and claim· cul-

tural citizenship through "poaching" the voices of more powerful-com;-
munities and adapting them to their own purposes. In order to understand
the tactics men who have sex with men in China utilize to imagine so-
cial identity, then, it is necessary to first examine the kinds of voices
they have available in their sociocultural environment.
As a result of pressures from economic and political reforms within
and forces of globalization from without, China finds itself in the midst
of a "discursive revolution." The relatively monologic character of pub-
lic discourse of the past has given way to a situation in which various
voices compete for dominance: voices from various sectors of govern-
ment, from scientific and educational circles, from commercial inter-
ests, from international bodies, and from newly emergent communities
which have sprung up in a more liberalized (and consumerized) pUblic
sphere. Each of these discourses creates different patterns of dominance
and marginality and presents subaltern populations with different op-
portunities for tactical maneuvering.
According to Gu (1996), the two most powerful "official discourses"
operating in China since the death of Mao have been what he calls the
discourse of revolution and the discourse of reform. The discourse of
revolution, once the dominant discourse in socialist China, embodies
a militant, offensive political project of "class struggle" and enforces
90 JOURNAL OF HOMOSEXUALITY
social relationships of collectivism, conformity and self-denial. The dis-

course of refoml, on the other hand, which grew out of the policies of
Deng Xiaoping, embodies a political project emphasizing "economizing"
over "politicizing," and allows for a more individualistic approach to re-
lationships between citizens and society. What distinguishes these two
discourses most, however, is a fundamentally different conceptualization
of the relationship between discourse and social practice. Whereas the
discourse of revolution is characterized by an attempt to "change the
world to fit discourse" (e.g., "Put politics in command."), the discourse of
reform attempts to "fit discourse to the world" (e.g., "Seek truth from
facts").
More recently, a third official discourse has arisen in government
propaganda and the language of everyday life which, on one hand com-
petes with these other two dominant discourses and, on the other, repre-
sents a reconciliation of them, borrowing tools from both. This new
"discourse of means" (Gu, 1996) is called by Anagnost (1997) the dis-
course of civilization. It is a mixture of paqiotism, traditionalism and
consumerism which calls for the development of a new kind of con-
sciousness, one not based on class struggle or commitment to material
progress, but based instead on the notions of "civility" and "quality"
(suzhi).
The concept of "quality" (suzhi) in one sense summarizes the com-
plete ideological perspective of this discourse just as "Red" and "Ex-
pert" summarize the preoccupations of the discourses ofrevolution and
refonn, respectively. In it are brought together notions of modernity,
knowledge, hygiene, politeness, urbanity, wealth and "taste." It is a term
which Rofel (1999: 466) claims "indicates a broad-ranging semioticpoli-
tics in China. It arises in discussions about population control and de-
sired kinds of children, about capitalism and the kind of Chinese subject
who is capable of making wealth, as a way to constitute proper bour-
geois subjects and to mark the divisions between urban and rural." The
invocation of "population quality," writes Anagnost (1994: 260-261),
"has displaced the discourse of class to become a new currency of ex-
change in the politics of perception and experience ... one that easily
traverses the boundary between 'state' and 'society.'''
Closely related to the notion of "quality" is the powerful binary oppo-
sition between "stability" and "unregulated movement" or "chaos," a
distinction which on the one hand echoes deep-seated cultural values
from traditional cosmology, and on the other echos the political project
of the Party-State from Deng' s policy of "bringing order out of chaos"
(Gu, 1996; Li, 1995; Link, 1992) to more recent attempts to contain the
Rodney H. Jones 91
social upheaval resulting from the unregulated movement of people

from the countryside into the cities (Dutton, 1998). Anagnost (1994:
275) claims that "narrative(s) of despair" which "invoke the fear of luan
(chaos) (and) express concerns about stability and social control" are
the current regime's main strategy to produce the "willed consent" for
an authoritarian state.
In much contemporary discourse in China, from official to popular,
this fear of chaos is embodied in the specter of the "the floating popula-
tion," rural migrant workers who have, for the past 10 years, been flooding
into cities, many without proper residence permits. In public discourse
from official pronouncements to media portrayals, these liumin ("floating
people") are constructed as uneducated, untrustworthy, uncivilized, and
the source of many of the problems now plaguing China's cities, includ-
ing crime, drug abuse, prostitution and the spread of HIV. This popu-
lation, referred to by Dutton (1998) as China's new subalterns, is often
placed within the cultural category of the "hooligan" (also pronounced
liumin) (a category within which, until recently, homosexuals were
also placed). Whereas the discourse of revolution marginalizes for-
eigners, political dissidents and class enemies, and the discourse of
reform marginalizes ideologues, the backward looking and the "unsci-
entific," the discourse of civilization, ironically, marginalizes the very
people who were constructed as heroes in the propaganda of the past,
China's peasants.
Invented Identities
It is within the interplay of these three dominant discourses that gay.

identity and community is being invented by dominant communities and
institutions and imagined by gay men themselves. Although homosex-
ual behavior has been practiced in China for thousands of years and in
some periods of Chinese history has enjoyed wide acceptance and even
institutional status (Hinsch, 1992; Samsasha, 1997), it has always occu-
pied a rather ambiguous place in Chinese tradition, often tolerated
but seldom referred to (Hodge and Louie, 1998). Part of this ambiguity
from a modern Western point of view, stems from the fact that homo-
sexuality in China has traditionally been (and still is to some extent
today) both linguistically and culturally indicative of a series of social
practices rather than a distinct "social being," and thus not, as it is
largely now viewed in the West, incompatible with heterosexual sexual
practices and even marriage (Dikotter, 1995; Pan and Aggleton, 1996;
Chow, 1997,2001).
The first explicit constructions of the "homosexual person" in China

were probably produced during the Republican Period when, under
the influence of the traditional link between sex and reproduction, the
new nationalism, and a growing interest in eugenics, "homosexuality"
was portrayed as a foreign and "uncivilized" "perversion" which en-
dangered familial and social order, "deteriorated the racial spirit" and
threatened the "quality of the population" (Dikotter, 1995). Since the
establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, inventions ofhomosex-
uality in China have undergone considerable revision. In the early Rev-
olutionary Period, under the influence of the discourse of revolution,
racist constructions of homosexuality from the Republican Period were
re-conceptualized in political terms: homosexuality was seen as a symp-
tom of bourgeois decadence, and the homosexual as a kind of criminal
or "class enemy." Although there have never peen specific laws prohib-
iting homosexual behavior in China, during this period (and up until
the mid-1990s) homosexuals were regularly arrested under article 106 of
Chinese Criminal Law which prohibited "hooliganism" (Ruan, 1991: 3).
This article has since been repealed (replaced with other ways to police
subaltern communities) (Dutton, 1998).
In the Reform Period, moral and political models of homosexuality
were gradually replaced with medical models in which it was seen as
a disease (see for example Chinese Encyclopedia of Sexology Edito-
rial Committee, 1998; Liu ed., 1993; Ma, 1998; Sun, 1999; Yang and
Fang, 1994), and government clinics offered treatments such as "hate
therapy" to "cure" men who have sex with men of their desire for same
sex eroticism (Ruan, 1991; Zha, 1995). Despite this "medicalization" of
homosexuality, however, its association with hooliganism and foreigness
stilI persisted. This association was particularly salient in early repre-
sentations of HIV/AIDS which portrayed the disease as a result of the
moral bankruptcy and "sexual chaos" of the West epitomized by the im-
age of the diseased homosexual body. Even though official reports of
HIV prevalence among MSM in China are low, homosexuals are almost
always identified as a "high-risk group" in AIDS prevention materials
and journalistic treatments of AIDS, and often they are constructed as
the "source" of AIDS, both globally and in China (e.g., Ceng and Ren,
1997).
An example of this perspective can be seen in an article called
"Homosexuals' Unlucky Star," first published in Healthworld maga-
zine and later reprinted in the book Everybody Talk about AIDS (Zhao,
1996), in which the history of AIDS in China is framed as a story of ho-
mosexual transmission and foreign decadence.
Rodney H. Jones 93
On the 27th of May, 1985, an Argentine traveler landed in Shang-

hai, passed through Nanjing, Xian, planning to return home via
Beijing. Falling ill on the way, he was admitted to Beijing Union
Hospital. Two days later he died. The diagnosis was AIDS. He had
a history of homosexuality. He was Mainland China's first AIDS
patient. He came suddenly and left suddenly. In September 1989,
a middle aged man who worked in a food shop tested positive for
HIV (human immuno-deficiency syndrome or the AIDS virus). He
had suffered from syphilis twice before and had a history of homo-
sexuality, had gotten divorced. He admitted that he had on many
occasions had anal sex with foreigners. He was a sexually confused
person. Before long he ended up outside the country. A few years
ago it was said that he died of AIDS in a foreign country.
In this account, the traditional links between homosexuality and hoo-

liganism, foreignness and disease are subtly reinforced through an un-
derlying motif of movement-the careful chronicle of the movements of
China's "first AIDS patient" (a foreigner) through the country (though
there is no evidence that he infected anyone along the way) juxtaposed
with the "confused" wanderings of the Chinese homosexual out of the
country to die stripped of his "cultural citizenship." Although there is no
epidemiological connection between the two stories, by linking them
chronologically and thematically, the passage creates a powerful narra-
tive connection; they are both part of the same "storyline" of foreign-
ness, deviance disease and "unregulated movement."
More and more, however, Chinese officials, academics and clinicians
are revising these medical and moral models of homosexuality and em-
bracing social scientific constructions that see it as a social identity
rather than a mental disorder or a social problem. Sociologists, psychol-
ogists and medical doctors from institutions with close links to the state
(like the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) have declared that ho-
mosexuality is just as prevalent in China as it is in the West (Li, 1998;
Pomfret, 2000), and are beginning to approach MSM not as a collection
of isolated cases ofmental illness or "hooliganism," but as a legitimate
"community" or "subculture" (Li, 1998). In spring 2000, the Chinese
Psychiatric Association announced that it would remove homosexuality
from its list of mental disorders (Chang, 2001; Wan, 2001), and lengthy
examinations in social science tracts of the "cause" (and prevention) of
homosexuality are rapidly giving way to more careful descriptions of gay
people's behavior, their problems and their HIV vulnerability.
Today, although the association with hooliganism still doubtless ex-

ists in the minds of many officials, public security officers and members
of the public, arrests ofhomosexuals are mostly limited to demonstrable
acts of public sex. Random police harassment, however, remains com-
mon in many places, officers intimidating MSM in parks and other pub-
lic sex venues into paying "fines" so their activities will not be reported
to their families or work units (An, 1995; Chow, 1996).
This "legitimazation" of homosexual identity in official discourse has
occurred in part (as it did in the West) as a consequence of the AIDS
epidemic itself and the need for the government and the medical com-
munity to address the prevention needs ofthis population. In fact, govern-
ment produced AIDS prevention materials are probably the first place
official voices have addressed homosexuals as a legitimate audience, and
government produced and sanctioned AIDS prevention materials also
often contain among the most positive portrayals of the homosexual per-
son in official discourse. The Ministry of J:lealth's 1997 needs analy-
sis China Responds to AIDS (China Ministry of Health and UNAIDS,
1997: 22), for example, calls for "better approaches ... to reach (this
population) with information and support, and better means ... to em-
power them to protect themselves from HIV and STD infection" and
the first government produced AIDS prevention materials for this pop-
ulation produced in 1995, portray "gays" as educated, urbanized and
well-dressed and counsels them to pursue a healthy lifestyle with a sin-
gle, stable partner whom they can trust (Jones, 1999).
The transformation gay identity in official discourse has been the re-
sult not just of shifting dominent discourses and the realities of the HIV
epidemic, but also of strategic discursive work by AIDS workers, social
scientitst, doctors and others sympathetic to more tolerance towards ho-
mosexuals as well as from gay activists.
An example of such strategic discursive work can be seen in Friends Ex-
change, a newsletter started by Qingdao social scientist Zhang Beichuan
with assistance from the Ford Foundation and the sanction of govern-
ment health officials to educate homosexuals about HIV and AIDS.
Zhang's work is highly respected in official health circles, partly be-
cause he has been able to reach a population which officials regard as
"hard to reach," and partly because his way of "framing" this population
and its plight presents no challenge to the dominent discourses of the
Party-State in the way the more confrontational tactics of identity poli-
tics might.
The monthly publication contains articles on HIV prevention, homo-
sexual rights and advice on how to be a "happy homosexual," along
Rodney H. Jones 95
with personal ads of people seeking friends. What is interesting about

presentations of the "good" homosexual materials is that they are often
couched in the very same discourse of"cultural citizenship" as the more
negative examples seen in the previous section: Built around the themes
of stability, civilization, patriotism and the "quality" (suzhi) of the pop-
ulation.
In the lead story of the first issue published in 1998, Zhang argues
that successful AIDS prevention among gay men requires both gay men
and nonhomosexuals behave in a more "civilized" manner, gays con-
ducting their sexual affairs more responsibly and nongays regarding
sexual minorities with more compassion and tolerance (Zhang, 1998).
Not only does a "scientific view of homosexuality" display the "qual-
ity" of the nation, it also contributes to the "overall stability of society."
In this context the homosexual person is not represented as pro-
miscuous, deviant or criminal, but as a cultural citizen capable of cul-
tivating "quality" through leading a "healthy lifestyle," "regulating
his own behavior," "serving the society more positively and making a
greater contribution to society." The "good" homosexual is invented as
"knowledgeable," "patriotic" and "civilized."
The answer to the threat of AIDS among men who have sex with men
in Zhang's view is "raising the quality of the people," both homosexuals
and nonhomosexuals, by teaching them to approach sex and sexuality
in a more "scientific" and ethical manner. The political program of
"gay rights" presented is not an exercise in confrontation, but an invita-
tion for collaboration. "The aspiration of 'Friends, '" writes Zhang,
"is to invite groups of different sexual orientations to build civilization
together."
This appropriation of the voices of patriotism, science and the dis-
course ofcivilization is an example of the tactics marginalized or emer-
gent communities (and their advocates) can use to open up discursive
space for their own imagined identities. By presenting his work as "pub-
lic health" rather than "politics," Zhang appropriates both the legiti-
macy of scientific discourses and the patriotism associated with public
health campaigns. By framing his appeal within the constraints and val-
ues of the dominent discourse, he not only escapes reproach for his
ideas, but also positions homosexuals within that discourse rather than
outside of it. What is marginalized are "feudal" and "unscientific" atti-
tudes towards homosexuality that prevent gays from developing healthy
and stable relationships. The homosexual person is constructed not as a
threat to "civilization" (as in the past), but as a litmus test for measuring
how "civilized" a society is. "The attitude with which we approach the
question of homosexuality," Zhang writes, "is closely related to the

great enterprise of building civilization," and "how well it deals with
its homosexual question is one sign with which to measure a society's
"level ofcivilization."
Imagined Identities
All of the various ways homosexual identity is invented in public dis-

course act as tools which men who have sex with men themselves ap-
propriate and adapt to imagine their own identities, both individually
and collectively, and to assess individual and community risk (Douglas
and Calvez, 1990). Just as in the West preoccupations with homosex-
uality in medical and legal discourse resulted in it beginning to "speak
in its own name ... often in the same vocabulary, using the same catego-
ries by which it was medically disqualified" (Foucault, 1980: 101), the
emerging official and unofficial inventions of the homosexual person
in China provide for men who have sex with men there the very means
of subverting the constraints imposed on them by these inventions. As
Dutton (1998: 62) writes, although homosexual men in China witness
themselves represented "as examples of criminality or as specimens ex-
amined in the field of sex studies," it is this process of "othering" itself
"that gives them voice."
The ways the men I spent time with imagined their sexual and social
identities was neither uniform nor stable, but instead constituted a com-
plex process of brico/age which brought together diverse elements of
countless inventions of homosexuality in local and global media, in the
pronouncements of government officials, in the annals of scientific
journals, and in health education materials about HIV/AIDS. At the same
time, every man I met was also engaged in other imaginings that took
place around other communities: Communities defined by generation,
region and ethnicity, economic class, communities of entertainers, sex
workers, students, police officers, migrants from the same province or
village, government workers, and private entrepreneurs, and the imag-
ined community of the nation itself.
The most striking thing about the ways my informants imagined social
identity and the impact this had on their sexual practices and assessments
of HIV risk is that these identities were often predicated upon the very
same boundaries as the inventions of the homosexual in public discourse
analyzed in the previous section-boundaries separating the Chinese from
the foreign, the civilized from the uncivilized, the knowledgeable from
Rodney H. Jones 97
the ignorant, the "stable" from the "chaotic" and the cultural citizen
from the cultural outcast.
NATIONAL BOUNDARIES
One way Chinese men who have sex with men (or those who speak
"for" them) claim cultural citizenship is by, as we saw above, inserting
themselves into the nation's narratives. A large part of formulating a
sexual identity, as Weeks (1985) observes, is giving shape to "unstable
narratives" through fitting them into "appropriated histories."
One common way this is done is by appropriating stories and idioms
from dynastic history. Sympathetic researchers into homosexuality,
both local (Li, 1998; Li and Wang, 1993; Zhang, 1994, 1996) and foreign
(Hinsch, 1992; Ruan, 1991), as well as gay men themselves, regularly
catalogue the emperors and high officials of the past who are said to
have had homosexual relationships, and the fixed expressions that sig-
nal these historical narratives (like "cut sleeves" and "sharing a peach"
are frequently appropriated by homosexuals and nonhomosexuals alike
to refer to same sex love. Along with these stories and expressions
comes a claim of "naturalness" for homosexuality grounded in Chinese
tradition and history.
Some of my informants made these claims even more explicit by pro-
viding "re-readings" of Chinese classical texts. In the following ex-
cerpt, for example, an informant borrows the words of Confucius, the
nation's greatest proponent of boundaries, in order to· argue that the
moral and medical boundaries between hetero and homosexual behav-
ior have no basis in Chinese tradition:
I am what I am ... "eating and sex are human nature" that's

what Confucius said ... "eating and sex are human nature" lik-
ing a certain kind of food and being inclined towards a particular
sex are the same ... being inclined towards men or others being
inclined toward women is the same as eating just different
tastes ... they're both normal ... there's no difference ... that's
exactly what Confucius said. [16]
While claiming membership in the "Chinese culture," my partic-

ipants also sometimes distanced themselves from identities and so-
cial practices they construed as "foreign." Throughout my interaction
with my informants, while they often appropriated symbols of Westem
gay identity (and consumerism) with relish, they just as enthusiasti-

cally distanced themselves from the West when it came to issues like
relationships, "coming out" and HIV vulnerability. Often this included
appropriating stereotypes from popular consciousness and Party propa-
ganda regarding the "promiscuity" of foreigners in general, the superfici-
ality of relationships in the West, and, most importantly, the construction
of AIDS as a "foreign disease." It also sometimes involved appropriat-
ing tools from more "revolutionary" (and homophobic) AIDS histories
from official discourses which construct AIDS as having "invaded" from
the West as a result of "reform and opening up" seen in the following ex-
cerpt of a conversation I had with a group of men in a Beijing park.
A: Come on over ... here's a handsome foreigner ... do you want

to play (have sex) with him?
B: I don't dare, I'm afraid of AIDS.
Ri: You're afraid of AIDS?
B: You can speak Chinese!
Ri: Why are you afraid of AIDS? .
B: AIDS is from foreign countries ... China has no AIDS.
Ri: Really?
A: Now (China) has it ... it has spread here.
B: You can say China was a "pure land" ... but after reform and
opening up ... foreigners came in . . . and so all of these dirty,
things have flown in.
Although, as a collective strategy for claiming cultural belonging, the

repudiation of Western ways of being gay has the potential of amplify-
ing social action for men who have sex with men in China, on the level
of individual sexual action, emphasizing differences between foreign
and local ways of being gay can result in limiting participation in safer
sex by activating powerful cultural metaphors equating foreignness with
disease and giving rise to notions of cultural or racial immunity (Jones,
1999; Quinn, 1992).
Rodney H. Jones 99
REGIONAL BOUNDARIES
Another important set of boundaries along which gay identity is

forming in China are more local boundaries, boundaries between North
and South, between more economically developed areas and poorer ar-
eas, and, most importantly, between the city and the countryside. Offi-
cial histories of the spread of AIDS within China were often appropriated
by my informants to claim identities of "safety" for themselves by situat-
ing HN in other places and in other kinds of people (particularly "drug
addicts," "prostitutes" and "people from the countryside" -or "the float-
ing population"). Absent from the stories my informants told me of
the spread of AIDS in China, however, were any cases of homosex-
ual transmission at all (like those in the above-mentioned examples).
When they appropriated official histories of AIDS, they consistently
wrote themselves out of them. What they retained, however, was the
construction of AIDS as the consequence of crossing boundaries, in par-
ticular the boundary between the city and the countryside, between
educated and "civilized" urban residents and what they referred to as
'·outsiders" (wailaide).
The category of '·outsider" does not just index geographical origin. In
fact, just being from another province or city does not necessarily earn
one the status of an outsider. Instead, the label points to a whole host of
distinctions including those between urban and rural, civilized and
primitive, genuine and false, knowledgeable and ignorant, and "safe"
and ·'risky." Consistent with more official discourse, the community in-
vented at the nexus of these distinctions in my participants' discourse
was invariably that of the "floating population."
One. of my informants explained his feelings about "these kinds of
people" this way:
A lot of the floating population ... they come from the country-
side . . . especially for those with no purpose who are called
"blindly wandering" ... since they're from the countryside ... ev-
ery aspect of their cultural quality is not very good ... they often
rob and steal ... this kind of behavior and make the society,
chaotic so we feel these kinds ofpeople are not very good....
One of the main reasons my informants gave for this attitude was the
prevalence of "outsiders" among the thieves, blackmailers and "money
boys" whom they encountered in parks, discos and bars. When particular
places were seen to be increasingly occupied by "outsiders" (particularly

"money boys") they were labeled luan (chaotic).
As well as associating the "floating population" with social disorder,
my participants also associated it with bodily disorder (promiscuity, dis-
ease and perversion) as well as intellectual disorder (ignorance). "Out-
siders" were universally constructed by my informants as dirty, wanton
and of greater risk of HIV infection which they spread to the urban com-
munity because of their ignorance and greed. One informant noted:
They don't use condoms ... some don't even know how to use
them ... their "cultural level" (educational level) is too low.
Boundaries between the countryside and the city were also often im-
plicated in the construction of "gay" or tongzhi identity itself with many
of the urban men I spoke to refusing to grant "floaters" membership in
imagined gay communities (believing most of them were just doing it
for the money), and the men from the countryside I met much less likely
to refer to themselves as tongzhi or "gay" or even "homosexual," even if
their desire for same sex eroticism was genuine.
COMMUNITY BOUNDARIES
In addition to boundaries separating the "Chinese" from the foreign,

the urban from the rural, and the "stable" from the "moving," within
and among the co'mmunities I observed, other boundaries also played an
important part in how identity was strategized and how my informants
claimed and imputed "risk" and "safety" in sexual negotiations. These
boundaries have less to do with places and more to do with socioeco-
nomic class, education and the kinds of people one associates with. They
cannot, however, be completely separated from the boundaries discussed
above, since place of origin often plays an important role in assigning
other kinds of identities.
The most important of these community boundaries, of course, is that
which separates those who consider themselves part of an imagined
community of men who have sex with men ("gays," tongzhi, "people
like us") and those who imagine themselves as not belonging to this
community. This boundary between what Western researchers might
call "community-affiliated" and "noncommunity affiliated" MSM is in
some respects drawn in different ways and used to achieve different
Rodney H. Jones 101
purposes in China than in many Western countries. One reason for this
is the large number of community participants who also claim participa-
tion in heterosexual familial communities. Easily 80 percent of the men
I met during my fieldwork were married, many had children, and even
the unmarried ones often admitted that they were obligated to get mar-
ried eventually.
Unlike in the West, however, marriage is never something that pre-
cludes one from claiming affiliation in an imagined community of "gay"
(or tongzhi) men, and the men I observed rarely exhibited discomfort in
claiming participation in both "heterosexual" and "homosexual" com-
munities at once, talking about their girlfriends, fiances or wives to
other gay men, proudly showing pictures of their children to keep
the conversation going during the practice of "fishing" (seeking sexual
partners) in public places. Although some of my informants professed
reluctance to develop a relationship with a married man, this reluctance
was not nearly as intense or widespread as it is in the West, probably
because being married is the norm rather than the exception, and some-
times claiming the identities of a "responsible husband," a "good fa-
ther" and a "filial son" could actually make one even more desirable as a
partner, these identities being seen as evidence of "quality" (SiIZhi),
"stability" and relative "safety" in regard to the possibility ofHIV trans-
mission.
Just as participation in "heterosexual" communities did not exclude
one from claiming an imagined "gay" identity, participation in commu-
nities of "imagined comrades" did not necessitate claiming that identity
for oneself. Both of the communities I observed had regular participants
who did not consider themselves "gay," "homosexual" or tongzhi, or, at
least not "full time" tongzhi, and denying identities in these imagined
communities rarely resulted in sanctions from those who claimed them.
Just as in the West, however, the degree to which one imagines oneself
as part of a gay community often has important consequences on how
one assesses ones personal vulnerability to HIV and how one manages
sexual risk (Chapple, Kippax, and Smith, 1998; Gold, 1995; Hays and
Peterson, 1994). When I asked one of my participants whether or not he
used condoms for anal sex, for example, he said:
I only go to the fishing pond occasionally ... I'm not "full-time" .

I've also got a girlfriend, so I'm not the same as most comrades .
right? ... so I really hate to use condoms ... and I don't need to use
them.
Another important community boundary I observed among the men

with whom I participated was that which separates those who are "for
sale" (maide) (or "money boys") from those who are not. Like gay iden-
tity, identity as one who has sex for money transverses geographical,
generational and class boundaries and plays and important role in deci-
sions about sexual risk behavior. Also like "gay" or tongzhi identities,
the category of "for sale" is inherently ambiguous and often does not
have a one to one relationship with practices of having sex for money.
In fact, a large number of men who have sex for money in China would
not be considered "for sale." The category of "for sale" is really a social
category, not an occupational one, contingent on one's place of origin
(invariably the countryside), whether or not one's behavior is "civi-
lized" or not, and one's "cultural level." They are blamed by "quality
tongzhi" for giving tongzhi a bad name and sometimes my informants
appropriated less favorable inventions of the homosexual person in
mainstream discourse with which to label this class of people:
A lot of outsiders ... they're "for sale"' they want money....

I've heard so many stories ... including my family has so many
difficulties ... my mother is sick. ... I have to take a train to go and
see her.... I don't have any money ... or I lost it I don't have
anyplace to live.... In Beijing we have a saying a rabbit's
mouth ... rabbit means gay ... a rabbit's mouth is like water in a
public bathhouse which means a rabbit's mouth is definitely
very dirty.' .. so how can I put it ... we Beijingers don't really
like this kind of people.
Finally, just as in official constructions of heterosexual transmission,

"for sale" (maide) people from the countryside were almost always por-
trayed by my informants as more vulnerable to HIV infection and some-
times as the "source" of infection in urban gay communities:
We think it's easier for "for sale" people to get dise~ses ... this is
true ... "for sale" people definitely get diseases easily.
There is, however, in the communities which I observed, a more "civi-

lized" way to have sex for money which is usually referred to with terms
like "introducing friends." This usually involves a friend or acquaintance
arranging a meeting with a potential sexual partner. Although money or
gifts are not always involved in such introductions, they often are. The
individual to whom "the friend" is introduced not only gives gifts of
Rodney H. Jones 103
money or goods to the "friend" but also to the "introducer." So ambigu-

.ous is this relationship that sometimes the "friend" who is being intro-
duced is not even aware of the underlying commercial nature of the
transaction.
The practice of"introducing friends" can serve an important function
in a social environment in which "safe" venues for meeting sexual part-
ners are limited and one often must be careful about concealing one's
activities. In fact it is often through paying for sex through such "intro-
ductions" that men, particularly married men or those of higher income,
avoid the dangers they associate with the "for sale" (maide) robbery and
blackmail. "I'm a wealthy man," one of my informants told me. "If! go
out and try to meet people myself. I might get robbed. So I prefer for
friends to introduce me to boys."
What complicates these transactions that teeter on the edge of sex
work, particularly in terms of the negotiation of sexual risk behavior, is
the need for participants to enact identities and face strategies with lan-
guage and practices that are part of the domains of "friendship" and "so-
cial etiquette" rather than the domain of commercial sex work. The
practice of ··introducing friends," especially among my older informants,
is lodged within a larger collection of social practices and social rela-
tionships with deep cultural roots which includes rules pertaining to th~
·'loyalty" one owes to friends, the duty one owes to superiors, and the
reciprocity one owes to those who have offered favors or gifts (Yang,
1994). In such contexts, therefore, it might be more difficult for the
"friend" who has been introduced to refuse practices like unprotected
anal sex given the relationship of reciprocity he has with both his "new
friend" and his old one, and the person to whom the friend was intro-
duced might be more careful about engaging in practices that might im-
pute '·spoiled" identity onto his sexual partner (like suggesting condom
use-see below), for to do so would also risk the "face" ofthe friend who
has done the introducing.
Being a "Quality Comrade"
As in the official constructions of the homosexual person examined

above, all of the boundaries my informants appropriated to claim and
impute individual and collective identities-geographical boundaries,
class boundaries, boundaries of education, sophistication, boundaries
between those who sold their bodies and those who simply accepted
gifts from friends-all intersect in the primary cultural category of the
discourse of civilization, the category of "quality" (suzhi).
Discussions of "quality" permeated almost every aspect of my infor-

mants' lives. Many of their decisions about where to go, what to buy,
with whom to associate and with whom to have sex (and how) centered
around strategies for claiming and imputing various degrees of "qual-
ity." As in official constructions, the notion of "quality" for my partici-
pants brought together traditional ideals of morality and filial piety,
revolutionary ideals of patriotism and loyalty, and modem bourgeoisie
ideals oftechnological advancement, style and wealth. One of my infor-
mants described "quality" like this:
A: I think a persons "quality" includes their thinking their edu-

cational (cultural) level ... also their moral standard combined
together.
RJ: Okay ... can you explain a bit more?
A: Explain ... a person's thinking is his ... the boundaries of his

thought. It's a kind of level of thought ... and then.... I think edu-
cational level should be included as part of a person's "quality" ...
especially now ... ah ... this kind of ... now the computers ... or a
lot of technical things are things we need to study ... if you can't
use these kinds of things then I think you're illiterate that's
not to say you can't read but you can't use these tools tools
that you must be able to use ha ... now another aspect a very
important part of a person's "quality" is their moral standard ...
in accordance with the behavioral standards of contemporary so-
ciety this is very important ... and then there is his cultural
level this is possibly ... also very important but ... but I myself
think that the most important is his moral standard.
The category of "quality" was frequently appropriated by my infor-

mants as a tool for assessing the relative "risk" or "safety" of potential
sexual partners (risk here including both the risk of being cheated or
robbed and the risk of contracting an STD or HIV). The relationship
between "quality" and possible HIV (or STD) infection centered on its
association with characteristics like stability, knowledge and "cleanli-
ness," and of the association of lack of "quality" with ignorance, pro-
miscuity and all of the transgressions of ~ocial, sexual and geographical
boundaries associated with the "floating population" and those who
were "for sale." In discussions with my informants regarding how they
assessed the relative "quality" of potential sexual partners, appearance,
Rodney H. Jones 105
dress and "hygiene" were almost always the first things mentioned. One
informant said:
In Fuzhou ... including X (another participant in the commu-

nity) ... he also says ... you can judge (whether they are infected
with HIV) by whether or not the clothes they wear are clean and
tasteful ... it makes a bit of sense, but not completely ... a bit
though.
Good grooming and nice clothes were seldom, however, sufficient

to earn the label of a "quality tongzhi," and some of my informants in-
dicated that outward beauty and trendy, expensive clothes sometimes
made them even more suspicious. One of my informants, for example,
told me that he preferred "fishing" in public bathhouses because you
could immediately judge the "quality" of a person by the underwear
they wore. More expensive or imported underwear, however, did not
signal to him "high quality," but rather "low quality" (what "high qual-
ity" person would care so much about their underwear?). Another told
me: "Sometimes the more beautiful a person is the dirtier they are ...
also the more money they have the dirtier they are ... because they can
use their money to buy it" (Beijing).
Another measure of "quality" frequently mentioned by my partici-
pants was "knowledge" or educational level, those with more education
seen both as more desirable and safer:
You have to see if your partner's healthy you can tell from his
skin you also have to look at his face does he have any edu-
cation if this person's education is better ... or if he more gen-
tile more civilized ... you can judge from this ... you don't
want to go with those "money boys."
Traditional values were also associated with quality, giving rise to

situations in which married partners might even be considered more de-
sirable than non-married ones:
What he says is the most important ... mmm ... when he's talking
you can find out his ... mm moral standard and quality ... to take
an example ... for example ... if a comrade says.... I really love
my mother and father. ... I definitely have to get married even
though I'm not willing I definitely have to get married ... because
I love them ... it shows he has love ... he really loves his parents ...
he has China's beautiful traditional morality ... this person ... his
quality; is relatively high.
Particularly notable in this excerpt are the collectivistic standards

against which "quality" and desirability are measured in contrast to the
individualistic standards valued in most gay communities in the West
("honesty," "authenticity"). Whereas in the West social status is granted
to those who are most willing to display their gay identity in public
(even in the face of familial or societal rebuke), in China it is more likely
to be granted to those who are able to "gracefully" enact tongzhi identity
privately but publicly enact the identities of a good family man and a
respectable citizen.
Perhaps the most important marker of "quality," and the one most di-
rectly related to decisions about sexual risk, is one's reputation in the
community as either "promiscuous" (hua) or not. Just as with conceptu-
alizations of sex work, however, imputations' of "promiscuity" are often
not based solely on the number of sexual partners one has, but rather on
the kinds of people with whom one associates, the places one visits and
the ways one conducts and talks about sexual interactions.
Perhaps the biggest irony associated with the cultural category of hua
(promiscuous) is its relationship with community participation and inte-
gration. It is often the case that the more fully one is integrated into com-
munities of practice of gay men, the more one risks being assigned to
the category of hua, whereas those who participate on the peripheries of
such communities are sometimes considered less of a risk. One infor-
mant said, "If you often show your face at these kinds of places (parks,
bars and discos) they (potential sexual partners) will think that your qual-
ity is not high" (Beijing). Another said:
First when you're talking to him ... you pay attention to whether
or not he knows a lot ofpeople in the circle ... or is very promiscu-
ous ... willing to make love with a lot of people ... in which case
I wouldn't do it with him ... but ... ifhe doesn't come out much ...
and he's relatively honest and innocent ... and moral ... not pro-
miscuous ... doesn't accept money ... then OK, I'd certainly be
willing to make love with him.
The appropriation of the category of "quality" and all of the social

boundaries that it draws as a resource for the imagination of individual
and collective identities among men who have sex with men in China
has a significant effect on the way they conduct their sexual negotiations.
Rodney H. Jones 107
The negotiation of sex often becomes, in effect, a negotiation of quality,

participants appropriating various cultural tools in an ongoing series
of claims and imputations of education or ignorance, cleanliness or dirt-
iness, urban or rural origin, morality or promiscuity, and "safety" or
·'risk." Not only do these claims and imputations of quality result in as-
signing social meaning to different kinds of practices and different kinds
of people, but they also determine what other kinds of tools can be intro-
duced into the situation and the meanings those tools carry.
Within the boundaries appropriated from the discourse ofcivilization,
for example, condom use, takes on shifting and ambiguous meanings.
On the one hand, in some situations, or in abstract or hypothetical dis-
cus sions, condom use can be a marker of "high quality." One informant
said:
Probably people with higher quality will use condoms ... or say
they don't like to do it ... if they don't use protective measures ...
they will avoid ... anal sex.
On the other hand, claims and imputations of quality made through

such displays are also often seen as reasons to dispense with condom
use. In fact, only a handful of the men I interviewed reported actually
using condoms always or even often in their sexual encounters. The rea-
son they gave most consistently was that they felt if they chose "qual-
ity" partners, condom use was unnecessary:
I know how to use it ... but I've never used one before.... I don't
think I need to ... because I'm relatively careful ... relatively care-
ful in choosing partners.
In some situations, in fact, initiating condom use was seen as more of

a "risk" than not using condoms, a threat to the "positive face" of both
participants. So, while outside of sexual encounters talking about con-
doms might be used to claim or impute "quality," within sexual encoun-
ters their use is seen as claiming or imputing "risky" identities:
Ifllike my partner ... it feels strange to use this (a condom) it

gives the feeling that you don't trust me-you think I'm dirty and
if you reverse it-no you're not dirty.... I just want to protect
you ... then I'm dirty this is the most important reason.
Such threats to claims of quality are even more problematic when

"love" (or the promise of love) is involved. In this regard, the strategy
of being a "quality comrade" by establishing a long-term relationship
based on love and trust which is advocated in health promotion materi-
als for gay men (and by the men themselves) can work against the adop-
tion of safer practices, unsafe sex itself being sometimes used as a tool
for establishing these kinds of relationships and maintaining them.
When two people are together ... and they like each other ... you
can't use this (a condom) ... if you use it it means you doubt your
partner ... or you doubt yourself.
In such cases, as has been observed elsewhere (e.g., Edgar et aI., 1992;
Keogh et aI., 1998; Jones, Yu, and Candlin, 2000; Rosenthal et aI., 1999),
sexual risk has a functional dimension, not using condoms seen as signal-
ing trust, commitment and fidelity:
If I'm with the person I like the most. ... I really believe him ...
then I won't use a condom.
Imaginary Protections and Imagined Communities
The key to understanding the ways men who have sex with men in
China are building sexual identity and community lies in understanding
the ways, both in the macro-political debate in public discourse and in
the micro-politics of everyday interaction, they strategically appropri-
ate the boundaries drawn by established discourses-most importantly,
the discourse of civilization, with its attendant concepts of moder-
nity, urbanity, knowledge, stability and "quality." It requires that we ex-
plore the regions where sexual identities "camp-out" on the borders of
other, already existing overlapping and inter-nested communities and
identities.
One important revelation of this analysis involves how tactics for
identity construction and community formation can, on the level of situ-
ated social practice, increase vulnerability to HIV infection. The way
communities of men who have sex with men appropriate mainstream
discourses to claim citizenship in other invented communities (the na-
tion, the Party, the city, the family, etc.) is crucial in determining the
kinds of cultural tools available to them to avoid infection. Such posi-
tioning, for example, has had a positive effect on official support for
Rodney H. Jones 109
MSM related prevention activities or official responses to gay commu-

nity activities.
On the level of the "interaction order" (Goffman, 1983), the dialect of
imagination and invention which takes place in the larger social area is
mirrored in the moment by moment trading of claims and imputations
of identity, and personal assessments of HIV risk. For my informants,
sexual negotiation involved not just a negotiation of practices, but, more
importantly, a negotiation of identities, with "identities of safety" being
claimed by distancing oneself from the foreign, the rural, "uncivilized,"
the uneducated and the "low-quality." In this regard, the appropriation
of voices from mainstream discourse by Chinese gay men for imagin-
ing their identities is implicated in the formation of what Mendes-Leite
(1998) calls "imaginary protections," boundaries communities and in-
dividuals create through reassigning meaning to official knowledge
in ways which conform more closely to the demands of their social
lives. Among the "imaginary protections" constructed by my partici-
pants with tools from the discourse ofcivilization were the belief AIDS
is more a matter of who you are or who you appear to be than what you
do and that AIDS can be avoided by avoiding certain kinds of people
and avoiding claiming certain kinds of social identities for one.self (see
also Adam, Sears, and Schellenberg, 2000; Ames, Atchinson, and Rose,
1995; Gold, Skinner, and Ross, 1994; Jones, 1997; Metts and Fitzpatrick,
1992; Zhang, Li, and Zu, 2000).
The result of these "imaginary protections" is not just increased sex-
ual risk by the men who appropriate them, but also the same kinds
of discrimination and stigmatization within communities of men who
have sex with men (along the lines of class, education and geographical
origin) which these men suffer at the hands the larger society (Rofe!,
1999). So long labeled "hooligans" themselves, part of the way Chinese
gay men are constructing themselves as legitimate cultural citizens in-
volves shifting this label onto others, specifically migrant workers from
the countryside.
Just as in official discourse, the identities of hooligan and the cultural
citizen, and of "risky partner" and "safe partner," are predicated on the
boundaries of the nation, of geographical regions (particularly the dis-
tinction between the rural and the urban), and of class, marginalizing so-
cial and sexual practices that fall outside of these boundaries.
Although these voices from the discourse of civilization are used to
construct "imaginary protections," they are also, however, central to the
imagination of community. The "imaginary protections" that make men
more vulnerable to HIV are at the same time tools with which spaces for
community empowennent are opened up and claims of "cultural citi-

zenship" are made, as well as tools with which individuals manage so-
cial stigmatization, build self-esteem and reconcile the demands of
. being a tongzhi with the demands ofmembership in the other communi-
ties (the family, the nation) in which they participate.
This is not a contradiction, but an inherent characteristic of "imaginary
protections." Mendes-Leite (1998) emphasizes that what distinguishes
imaginary protections is not their "irrationality" but their "rationality,"
although it is a rationality based on daily experiences and immediate
social needs rather than "scientific facts." She writes:
[I]maginary protection strategies do not imply that the individuals

affected do not know about or do not believe in the effectiveness of
HIV prevention. On the contrary, faced with the social demand to
rationalize (sexual) behaviors and practices perceived by most as
belonging to a natural or even instinctive framework, people cre-
ate cultural responses which allow fqr both the preferred sexual
practice and protection against HIV. (1 to)
Although Mende-Leite sees "imaginary protections" as a matter of

individual cognition (a way of reducing cognitive dissonance), my data
suggests (along the same lines taken by Douglas and Calvez, 1990) that
the most important dimension in the fonnation of "imaginary pro-
tections" is the social dimension, particularly the discourses through
which the cultural tools for imagining are made available to people.
"Imaginary protections" can never really be separated from the imagi-
nation of community. All imagined communities, in a sense, are built
from "imaginary protections." Being a "quality comrade" in China may
in many ways make MSM there more vulnerable to HIV infection, but
in many other ways, it provides them tools with which to effectively
minimize other risks (arrest, blackmail), overcome marginality and man-
age their participation in other communities to which they belong.
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Imagined Comrades

and Imaginary Protections:

ABSTRACT. This paper describes the recent development of identity

Rodney H. Jones is Assistant Professor, Department of Language and Communica-

strategy also implicated in the formation of attitudes and social practices

KEYWORDS. China, discourse analysis, gay men, HIV/AIDS, sexual

Communities are to be distinguished not by their falsity/genuine-

Safer Sex as a "Community Practice"

concepts in social science research, especially survey research (Dow-

these ways of "being gay" carries different meanings, signaling affilia-

Inventing and Imagining Communities

Understanding the relationship between HIV vulnerability and "com-

notions of "community" and what people say and do in situated encoun-

already available in the sociocultural setting. All emergent communities

(that) concentrates on bringing the power under control by blending

Emergent communities begin to imagine themselves and claim· cul-

social relationships of collectivism, conformity and self-denial. The dis-

social upheaval resulting from the unregulated movement of people

It is within the interplay of these three dominant discourses that gay.

The first explicit constructions of the "homosexual person" in China

On the 27th of May, 1985, an Argentine traveler landed in Shang-

In this account, the traditional links between homosexuality and hoo-

Today, although the association with hooliganism still doubtless ex-

with personal ads of people seeking friends. What is interesting about

question of homosexuality," Zhang writes, "is closely related to the

All of the various ways homosexual identity is invented in public dis-

I am what I am ... "eating and sex are human nature" that's

While claiming membership in the "Chinese culture," my partic-

gay identity (and consumerism) with relish, they just as enthusiasti-

A: Come on over ... here's a handsome foreigner ... do you want

B: I don't dare, I'm afraid of AIDS.

Ri: You're afraid of AIDS?

B: You can speak Chinese!

Ri: Why are you afraid of AIDS? .

B: AIDS is from foreign countries ... China has no AIDS.

A: Now (China) has it ... it has spread here.

Although, as a collective strategy for claiming cultural belonging, the

Another important set of boundaries along which gay identity is

places were seen to be increasingly occupied by "outsiders" (particularly

In addition to boundaries separating the "Chinese" from the foreign,

I only go to the fishing pond occasionally ... I'm not "full-time" .

Another important community boundary I observed among the men

A lot of outsiders ... they're "for sale"' they want money....

Finally, just as in official constructions of heterosexual transmission,

There is, however, in the communities which I observed, a more "civi-

money or goods to the "friend" but also to the "introducer." So ambigu-

Being a "Quality Comrade"

As in the official constructions of the homosexual person examined

Discussions of "quality" permeated almost every aspect of my infor-

A: I think a persons "quality" includes their thinking their edu-

RJ: Okay ... can you explain a bit more?

A: Explain ... a person's thinking is his ... the boundaries of his

The category of "quality" was frequently appropriated by my infor-

In Fuzhou ... including X (another participant in the commu-

Good grooming and nice clothes were seldom, however, sufficient

Traditional values were also associated with quality, giving rise to

Particularly notable in this excerpt are the collectivistic standards

The appropriation of the category of "quality" and all of the social

The negotiation of sex often becomes, in effect, a negotiation of quality,

On the other hand, claims and imputations of quality made through

In some situations, in fact, initiating condom use was seen as more of

Ifllike my partner ... it feels strange to use this (a condom) it

Such threats to claims of quality are even more problematic when

Imaginary Protections and Imagined Communities