@Awoo@hexbear.net @hellinkilla@hexbear.net

Tagging you both as I've also been looking into this. A statement this positive if enacted as actual working policy would be, without exaggeration given China's population, the biggest potential advancement for global LGBT rights since Obergefell so it's annoying that the only people commenting about it are the "dissident" type losers but the fact that the original WeChat post was removed by the platform took the wind out of its sails.

The Pekingnology substack describes that this petition and response process is a unique institution:

https://www.pekingnology.com/p/chinas-top-court-appears-to-privately

Petition, known in Chinese as 信访 xinfang, is a centuries-old channel through which people in China have appealed directly to the authorities. In its modern form, it allows citizens to submit complaints, requests, or policy suggestions to state bodies, which are usually handled one-to-one and outside public view. The Communist Party of China and State organs, including the Supreme People’s Court, are generally required to register them and to inform petitioners whether and how they will be handled.

However, responses to petitions are generally not regarded as legally binding decisions, nor do they in themselves constitute new legislation or policy. They are usually understood only as a summary of existing measures and a very preliminary indication of possible next steps. In other words, they may offer some insight into how the responding authority views a given issue, but should not be read as formal policy change.

This Chinese LGBT focus YouTuber with 25K subscribers claims to be responsible for the WeChat post and vouches for its authenticity.

According to his YouTube bio: "Uncle Qiang: founded PFLAG China in 2008, has written columns for Tencent Dajia, Holland Online, Stage and Screen, and many other media outlets, his personal blog, "Husband and Husband Life", has been a visiting scholar at the Kennedy School of Harvard University, and the Yale University Law School."

Here is a AI-generated transcription of the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkElBkCDJ-c

Hello everyone, I am Ah Qiang. So over the past two days, there has been a very hot, I suppose, incident. Namely, one of our friends wrote a suggestion letter to the Supreme Court, the Supreme People's Court. The title of this suggestion was very long, and then, very luckily, she received a reply from the Supreme Court. Then, I interviewed the person involved yesterday, and I have also kept in touch with her over these past two days. I will introduce the general sequence of events to everyone, which can also dispel the doubts of some friends who are thinking, is this real? Could it be photoshopped? Is it fabricated? I want to tell everyone that I did indeed do a fact-check on this. First, I had no fewer than five phone calls with the person involved; this is a true event. Second, I want to share the entire sequence of events with everyone next.

Actually, it was yesterday morning, because yesterday morning, one of our volunteer dads posted about this matter. At the time, after I read that article, I found it very interesting. I said, hey, where did you find out about this information? Are you familiar with the person involved? He said, I am familiar with the person involved. I said, then can you forward the contact information of the person involved to me? He then forwarded the person's WeChat to me. Then, around ten o'clock, I added this friend and subsequently did an interview with her. I was actually quite curious because I felt like, hey, whoever did this, at least in the current environment, I think it's quite a positive thing, a thing with relatively positive energy. So I wanted to understand a bit more; I was quite curious about who this person was.

So after chatting with her, I also learned that she is currently a graduate student, located in Shandong. Now regarding this court matter, because I felt that it's possible, right, that in a typical Chinese style, you write this suggestion letter, and then the court's reply might just be a procedural requirement, so they wrote this thing. I feel that what they say and what they do might not necessarily be connected, but I still think this matter is worth paying attention to because it is a very positive signal. When I was calling this friend, she talked to me for a long time about how you should go about writing this kind of suggestion letter, what quotes from whom you need to put at the beginning; it was very interesting.

So after this was done, because I was quite busy yesterday. When I went to work this morning, the very first thing was that I felt this matter actually deserves to be known by more people. Therefore, I wrote an article for the official public account. It was because her screenshot from the court website was actually not very clear, because she originally sent it to the WeChat group, so it wasn't particularly clear. If you put it in the article, the reading experience for the audience would actually be bad. I took the text of that court reply and put it into the dialogue box of Feishu, which we use for work, and then I took a new screenshot of it. So some people online were saying, hey, why are these two screenshots different? Isn't this obviously a fake? It's definitely not. This is because I took the original text—I'll say it again—put it into the Feishu dialogue box, and took a new screenshot, mainly for the reader's experience when reading, just so it could be seen more clearly.

So after that was done, I think about an hour or so passed. The person involved said, hey, can you change my name? She said it was because she didn't want her letter to appear in this viral spread. So later I said, alright then, and I went and modified her letter again. This is one situation. As for this person involved, let me introduce her to everyone. Of course, she doesn't particularly want this to spread and affect her own daily schooling. She was born in 2001, is a graduate student, and I think she is quite a powerful person. She didn't just write to the Supreme Court; she apparently also wrote to the Communist Youth League, and to another department as well, and the relatively good thing is that she received responses from all of them. Moreover, she said the Communist Youth League called her on the phone, and the Supreme Court gave her a reply on their website. Actually, this Supreme Court reply has a document number, and I even had her send that document number to me. The document number is: (2026) 法信字 Document No. 80029.

What was the reaction of the person involved? Uh, actually, this friend involved called me three times today; I feel she is a bit anxious. Because of this matter, in the morning, after our article was published, aside from the first time when she asked me to change her letter because she didn't want to be affected too much... And then after that, some time passed, and the account of our volunteer parent was retweeted by a large account on Twitter. After it was retweeted, she was very nervous. She said others told her that the article had been retweeted to a large account, and she was worried she would be affected. I said, well, this has happened, it's a public matter, and after it's been retweeted, there's nothing you can do. Furthermore, regarding writing this article, I said we all approached it from a positive, affirmative angle, rather than a critical angle. Including when I myself was putting together that article, I also felt that this is progress, this is a very meaningful thing. I wrote it from an angle of praise and appreciation; we are not criticizing. So speaking from this angle, I offered her some reassurance.

Then by the evening, she contacted me again. She felt like, hey, why have all the articles been deleted? Will they come looking for me? She herself was actually a little bit tense. I just said this is also very normal, right? We didn't fabricate anything, so even if they come to ask about it, it's normal. I feel that overall, for the person involved, I felt she was a little bit anxious today. Because she is a student, after all, so it can be understood. That is roughly the situation.

This YouTuber also made a substack post about this, though largely repeating the content of that WeChat post:

https://substack.com/@ahqiang/p-198537514