Well for one, China and much of the global south have been struggling against the political, economic, and cultural hegemony of the West for centuries now and there's a pretty visceral aversion to doing whatever the west is perceived to be telling us to do. Especially so on a cultural and societal level where Westerners have zero idea of who we are and how we do things but just constantly tell us how we should think and behave.
In this specific context, there well recognized scholars who posit that homophobia was spread in China by Westerners during the late Qing and Republican era. In addition to being rightfully wary of Western social and cultural meddling, there is also a strong rejection of the hypocrisy of the West causing this problem in the first place and now judging us for not immediately following their model in solving it.
For another, Western media just recently demonstrated how willing it is to politicize Disney movies by accusing China and Occupied Korea of being racist because of poor ticket sales of The Little Mermaid. If Westoid media makes a big song and dance about how a billion and a half Chinese people are homophobes because we didn't turn up to see a Disney movie, that's going to taint the whole movement with an association to hysterical Western political media.
I don't see how a story about a gay character could possibly do such damage to an entire movement regardless of its country of origin.
I'm really not trying to be obtuse I actually don't understand.
Well for one, China and much of the global south have been struggling against the political, economic, and cultural hegemony of the West for centuries now and there's a pretty visceral aversion to doing whatever the west is perceived to be telling us to do. Especially so on a cultural and societal level where Westerners have zero idea of who we are and how we do things but just constantly tell us how we should think and behave.
In this specific context, there well recognized scholars who posit that homophobia was spread in China by Westerners during the late Qing and Republican era. In addition to being rightfully wary of Western social and cultural meddling, there is also a strong rejection of the hypocrisy of the West causing this problem in the first place and now judging us for not immediately following their model in solving it.
For another, Western media just recently demonstrated how willing it is to politicize Disney movies by accusing China and Occupied Korea of being racist because of poor ticket sales of The Little Mermaid. If Westoid media makes a big song and dance about how a billion and a half Chinese people are homophobes because we didn't turn up to see a Disney movie, that's going to taint the whole movement with an association to hysterical Western political media.