The Heated Rivalry China is Losing in Soft Power

Jemma Tan | China Fellow

Image sourced from Raphael Renter via Unsplash

The runaway success of Canadian Crave production Heated Rivalry (HR), launched in November 2025, has brought the marketability and cultural influence of queer media firmly into the global consciousness. Garnering critical acclaim for blending explicit content and emotional intimacy, HR has shown that the subsidisation of screen production can reap strong soft-power returns. Under a system that nurtures creative leadership, HR’s focus on hockey, Canadian cities and cultural norms, interwoven with its queer storyline, ensured it was both a fundamentally Canadian product and universally resonant. Overwhelming viewership has even driven pirated streaming from censored markets like China, briefly achieving the title of  top-rated foreign show on Douban, its media review platform.

Ironically, the show’s popularity coincides with renewed crackdowns on same-sex media within China targeting similar ‘Boys Love’ (BL) productions. As other Asian nations leverage cultural exports of queer storytelling, China’s BL censorship risks haemorrhaging goodwill from young, feminist audiences that could foster future regional alignment on key foreign policy issues. At a time where queer media is gaining global legitimacy, HR exposes a potent missed soft power opportunity for China to utilise BL to foreground Chinese identity, strengthen regional ties and cement an inclusive international image. 

Dismantling a Cultural Phenomenon

While HR’s meteoric rise has taken the Western entertainment industry by surprise, the BL genre has long thrived within China. Since the 1990s, the Chinese market has produced some of the most globally acclaimed BL literature and television shows while simultaneously battling mutating government regulations for legitimacy. As the Xi Jinping era progresses, and amid post-COVID tightened government control on education, culture and religion, this battle is increasingly futile. China's National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) in 2021 institutionalised sweeping bans on “sissy men” in media, while over 30 female BL writers were arrested for alleged depictions of “obscene materials” in 2025 alone.

Survival implications for BL productions in a post-censorship environment are also aesthetic. Author Chai Jidan’s BL drama Addicted (2016) became a national phenomenon drawing one hundred million views within two weeks before censors pulled the program for same-sex intimacy, marking a shift in Chinese BL dubbed “The Age of Metaphor”. Subsequent BL adaptations now perform self-censorship or dangai, whereby romantic relationships are replaced with strong "bromances" and staged in ancient China or idealised fantasy worlds removed from their audience’s social realities. Alternative Asian entertainment markets are the only avenues for authors refusing to self-censor, demonstrated by the Taiwanese release of Chai Jidan’s latest Revenged Love (2025). 

The Dividends of Shifting Asian Regional Tolerance

While Chinese BLs defined the genre’s conventions, ongoing restriction has redirected audiences to Asian alternatives, simultaneously catalysing cultural affinities with the producing nations. Thailand now manages a BL industry exporting up to 60 shows annually that have boosted the awareness and visibility of queer people. Unlike their Chinese counterparts, Thai BL’s present realistic characters in contemporary settings that engage actively with queer issues, such as Wandee Goodday (2024), which explicitly referenced Thailand’s legalisation of same-sex marriage. Fan meetings, concerts and brand deals, as well as BL tourism, generated colossal returns for Thailand’s entertainment sector in 2025 reaching almost THB 4.9 billion (AUD $220 million). This growing ‘Thai Wind’ of soft power influence has been inadvertently fuelled by its contrast to China’s restrictions, shaping perceptions of Thailand as a society of openness and acceptance.

Even Asian nations without legal backing for same-sex marriages are gradually embracing BL to capture the movement towards mainstream acceptance. South Korea’s nascent BL market’s integration with Kpop is particularly groundbreaking given the conservative nature of their entertainment industry. Park Junhee, member of Kpop group A.C.E, expressed a growing consensus among young South Korean audiences in support of queer representation when he took a lead BL role in the hopes that the project might “create a more equal world for all”. Wherever they sit along the spectrum of LGBTQ+ rights, South Korea and other Asian nations understand capturing BL audiences as a strategic asset to bolster long-term ideological influence.

From an Insatiable Fandom to a Soft Power Liability

This regional shift in BL consumption has placed China’s censorship into context: operating not solely as a domestic cultural choice but an untimely strategic withdrawal from a globally expanding market. Chinese BL paradoxically attracts thriving fanbases, yet must forfeit this organic phenomenon as antithetical to the anti-queer ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP has misunderstood BL as a fundamentally feminist cultural space, where fans are drawn to stories told from a female gaze that imagines relationships freed from heterosexual constraints. For young women in China already shouldering the blame for dwindling birth-rates alongside spiking unemployment and housing costs, BL suppression is one pressure among many dismantling female creative agency, with feminist, #MeToo and queer female accounts removed from Chinese platforms at an accelerating pace. It is precisely these young, female audiences who sustain fandom economies, and whose growing resentment is reaching global audiences, rendering BL suppression both a strategic and commercial loss.

The CCP’s commitment to a censorship-first BL approach has ceded its audiences and soft power to rivals, who are successfully converting them into diplomatic capital. As regional BL industries continue to capture ideological alliances across future Asia-Pacific electorates, the foreign policy costs compound; amplifying perceptions of cultural rigidity and eroding civilian goodwill. When a Canadian hockey BL drama speaks more authentically to Chinese audiences than anything produced in Mandarin, the strategic costs of censorship are painfully obvious. 

Jemma is a 4th year student majoring in Finance and Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney, with an interest in how nurturing international ties can capitalise on the advantages of Australia’s multicultural society. Her connection to China is rooted in my heritage and lifelong appreciation of Chinese language and culture, strengthened during a transformative year abroad at Peking University in Beijing sponsored by the Westpac Asian Exchange Scholarship. 

In 2026, she will be working towards an Honours thesis in Chinese Studies centred around exploring the impact of Mandarin-English translation in cross-cultural interactions, working to bridge Australia’s prominent gap in Asia-capability across numerous sectors.

She is excited to contribute to YAIA as a fellow integrating her interests in finance, second language acquisition, economic policy, history and culture into insightful pieces commenting on international interactions with China.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Young Australians in International Affairs. All content is original, and no plagiarism has been used in the preparation of this article.