Two decades ago there were no gay men in China. That, at least, was the claim of a senior Chinese official when asked what proportion of his country’s HIV cases involved homosexual transmission.

A generation later, that era of denial seems almost quaint. On September 2nd Chaguan interviewed Peng Yanzi and Yang Yi, an openly—indeed cheerfully—gay Chinese couple, about their plans to register as one another’s legal guardian. The mutual agreement will allow each to take medical and some financial decisions for the other, should they grow infirm, undergo surgery or otherwise lose their faculties. They are among a pioneering band of same-sex Chinese couples taking advantage of a guardianship law initially drafted with the elderly in mind. This was amended in 2017 to cover all adults. A few months later creative lawyers and activists realised that registering as mutual guardians could give same-sex couples some legal protections, even if those fall well short of those provided by gay marriage.

Nationwide attention was sparked in August when a notary’s office in Beijing, where every act is weighed for its political correctness, approved the capital’s first known same-sex guardianship agreement. Almost as significant, to activists, was the neutral, even supportive coverage of the event in state-owned media. Posts about mutual guardianship in Beijing have cumulatively earned over 100m views on Weibo, a microblogging platform.

Official tolerance is not unlimited. Read more via the Economist