Liuxue (‘Studying Abroad’): A Pathway to Sexual Freedom for China’s Gay Youth?

In late March 2022, Shanghai imposed its strictest lockdowns since the Covid-19 outbreak two years earlier. Amid China’s stringent zero-Covid policy and crackdown on personal freedoms, internet searches for ‘conditions for immigrating to Canada’ surged, drawing the attention of authorities. To circumvent censorship on emigration-related searches, Chinese netizens adopted the code word run (润), whose Romanisation resembles the English word ‘run’, to express their desire of ‘running away from China’—a phenomenon later known as ‘runology’ (润学, or ‘run philosophy’). Run emerged as both a form of escapism catalysed by three years of lockdowns and an aspiration for a better life. Among Chinese youth, it became an alternative to two other responses to the declining employment opportunities and pressures of modern life in China: neijuan (内卷, ‘involution’) and tangping (躺平, ‘lying flat’) (see Brossard 2022; Richaud 2022). The so-called run movement, however, was attainable only for a small group—China’s urban elites—who had pursued lifestyle migration since the 2010s (Beck and Nyíri 2022), seeking a better living environment for their families and improved educational opportunities for their children. Similarly, young Chinese LGBTQ+ individuals have also chosen to leave the country, even before the pandemic, not only in response to a shifting political climate (Wang 2023) but also in pursuit of sexual freedom and other life aspirations (Ponce and Chen 2023).

Jie (a pseudonym, as are all the other names used in this essay), born in 1996, is one of the 16 Chinese gay youth who were studying or had previously studied in France whom I met and interviewed between 2020 and 2021 for my research. He is also the only informant who arrived in France after the outbreak of Covid-19 in early 2020. However, he does not consider his liuxue (留学, ‘studying abroad’) a form of run, as his aspiration to study overseas and explore the ‘outside world’ began during his adolescence, at a time when Chinese society was experiencing rapid socioeconomic transformations and deepening global exchanges. Growing up in a small city within a conservative social environment, Jie discovered his homosexuality in his teens with the rise of the internet. He decided to keep his sexual orientation a secret from his parents and relatives, though he later disclosed it to some close friends. His passion for foreign—especially Western—languages and cultures, combined with his vision of a ‘liberal, open, and gay-friendly West’, reinforced his determination to go abroad.

To realise this goal step by step, in 2014 he enrolled in a university specialising in foreign languages and chose French as his major, hoping to master another ‘useful’ foreign language. Born into a middle-income urban family, Jie was determined not to rely on his parents financially to realise his dream. He aimed to pursue a master’s degree at a prestigious university that offered exchange opportunities in France with government scholarships. When this plan failed in 2018, he followed many of his peers in working as a French translator for Chinese enterprises in Africa in the context of the intensifying China–Africa bilateral cooperation and exchange. After saving for two years, he quit his job in Conakry, Guinea’s capital, and arrived in Paris in 2020 as an international student. When I met him in the city a year later, Jie had this to say about his motivations for leaving China: ‘Pursuing my master’s degree and potentially a PhD were my primary goals in coming to France. The gay-friendly social environment was just an added benefit rather than the primary motivation behind my decision.’

Liuxue: A Normative Aspiration for the Privileged

Unlike Jie, most other informants depended primarily on financial (and emotional) support from their urban middle-class families to access international education. Hao, born in 1999, was one of them. After ‘failing’ gaokao (高考, China’s college entrance exam), he could not gain admission to a top-tier university in China. To secure a better academic path, his parents enrolled him in a China–France dual-degree program at a top-10 Chinese university by paying an overpriced tuition fee (approximately 10 times the usual cost). He spent two years studying French and completing preparatory courses before moving to France in 2019 to finish the remaining two years and earn degrees from both institutions. By the time we reconnected in 2024, he had obtained not only a bachelor’s degree but also a master’s from a prestigious business school in France and was doing an internship in a French multinational corporation. He planned to return to China after working in France for several years. Indeed, during our interview in December 2020, he shared that: ‘I see [mastering] French as an asset for my future career. I firmly believe that the combination of education and work experience abroad would make me more competitive in the [Chinese] job market.’

Many others followed a path similar to Hao’s, opting to study abroad in renowned universities to bypass the intense competition of gaokao or to obtain a master’s degree in more prestigious Western universities. Nevertheless, six of them, including Jie, majored in French at the bachelor’s level in China and saw pursuing a master’s degree in France as a logical subsequent step in their academic pursuits—provided that their families possessed the financial means and were willing to give the necessary support. This decision was influenced by their prior linguistic proficiency in French and the belief that it would facilitate access to superior educational resources and master’s programs in a different discipline, which is extremely difficult to attain in China. Furthermore, four of the six informants who majored in French, along with two other informants, initially came to France through interuniversity cooperation programs (with or without double degrees), which functioned as ‘migration infrastructure’ (Xiang and Lindquist 2014) facilitating their journey to study abroad. Similarly, seven other informants relied on commercial intermediary agencies—another form of infrastructure—which assisted with study program applications, language learning, and visa processes. This is a common practice among Chinese students aspiring to study abroad.

For China’s urban families, sending their children abroad for higher education primarily serves to evade the highly competitive gaokao, improve unsatisfactory gaokao results, or obtain a more prestigious graduate degree. It is also a strategy for leveraging an internationally recognised education to gain a symbolic advantage in China’s job market and navigate increasingly scarce resources and restricted opportunities for upward social mobility (Xiang and Shen 2009). The liuxue fever (留学热) is generally viewed as a form of transnational social reproduction in a Bourdieusian sense, wherein financially privileged Chinese urban families transform their economic capital into transnational cultural, social, and symbolic capital for their offspring, ultimately (re)producing social inequalities and securing or enhancing their social status (Bourdieu and Passeron 1970; Bourdieu 1986). While existing research often emphasises the role of a prestigious foreign degree in transnational social reproduction, recent discussions suggest that in the current context—characterised by a large influx of haigui (海龟, ‘sea turtles’, or overseas returnees) into the Chinese labour market—employers’ perspectives are shifting (Li 2020). They now place greater emphasis on post-study overseas work experience, as Hao noted above, alongside international academic qualifications.

Choosing France: Between Strategies and Imaginaries

France ranks as the sixth-largest host country for international students worldwide, with 25,605 Chinese students enrolled in its higher education institutions in the 2022–23 academic year. This makes China the third-largest source of foreign students in France, following the Francophone countries Morocco and Algeria (Campus France 2024). Despite the popularity of English-speaking countries (especially the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada) as traditional study destinations, France remains a strategic and attractive choice for Chinese students for a number of reasons: significantly lower tuition fees than in Anglo-Saxon countries, the quality of its higher education, its rich cultural heritage (including the global reach of the French language), and the value of a foreign qualification in the Chinese job market. The relatively lower cost of liuxue in France makes it especially appealing to students from lower middle-class or middle-income families, as well as those pursuing master’s or PhD degrees, similar to other European countries such as Germany, Austria, Spain, and Italy.

Romain, born in 1986, moved to France in 2008 for a master’s degree, later pursued a PhD, and now lives and works in Paris with his French partner. He first learned from his English instructor that studying in Western Europe, such as France or Germany, was relatively affordable compared with the United States or the United Kingdom. He often felt frustrated and ashamed of the ‘trash university’ label associated with his undergraduate institution, believing that his gaokao score of more than 600 out of 750 should have secured him a place in a more prestigious university. Excited by the prospect of studying in Europe, he saw it as a feasible option given his family’s financial means and support. After researching his options and consulting an intermediary agency, Romain chose France over Germany, believing that learning French would be more beneficial. He took evening French classes during the last two years of his undergraduate studies, achieving the required B2 proficiency level for studying in France. With the help of the agency, he then obtained a visa and enrolled in a cooperative program in southern France, where he completed a one-year preparatory French course before pursuing a master’s in law at a French public university.

However, relatively affordable tuition is not the sole reason France appeals as a study destination. Like other informants, Romain cited France’s rich cultural heritage—embodied by its renowned philosophers, writers, painters, and artists—as well as the perceived ‘romantic’ essence of French lifestyle and France’s economic and geopolitical standing within the European Union and globally as notable factors in his decision-making. Their perceptions of France extended beyond its economic prosperity, cultural richness, and political liberalism, shaped by China’s economic reforms, political events, and increasing global engagement since the 1980s. For Chinese gay youth, France symbolises not only an ‘open and liberal society’ but also a ‘gay-friendly’ one, particularly regarding LGBTQ+ rights and the legalisation of same-sex marriage. The 2013 marriage pour tous (same-sex marriage) law is often cited as evidence that France is a ‘gay paradise’, though this perception is frequently shattered on arrival due to experiences of exclusion and discrimination (Chen 2023; Chen and Ponce 2024). This social imaginary of France—and the West more broadly—fosters the aspiration for an ‘open and liberal society’ where young Chinese gay men can truly ‘be themselves’ (做自己) without concealing their homosexuality. While Chinese gay students typically frame their overseas study ambitions in terms of socially acceptable aspirations for upward mobility, the desire for sexual freedom remains a latent yet significant motivation.

Sexual Freedom: An Intrinsic Value of Migration

Like their heterosexual counterparts, Chinese gay students ostensibly emphasise the instrumental value of international education. Although, like Jie and Hao, most informants did not cite ‘the pursuit of sexual freedom’ as their main motivation, nearly all acknowledged imagining a ‘gay-friendly society’—a perception that fuelled their desire to go abroad, even if only temporarily. As Lucetta Y.L. Kam (2020) argues, liuxue has become ‘a new normative value’ among privileged urban Chinese families, enabling queer youth—through the financial and emotional support from their families—to empower themselves and escape China’s heteronormative and homophobic social and familial environments. Nonetheless, this ‘escape’ process is neither linear nor achieved overnight. All but one informant had undergone internal rural-to-urban or intercity mobility before studying in France, with four having even moved abroad for study or work. These different forms of geographical relocation enabled them, to varying extents, to experience greater sexual freedom and a relatively more open gay life in China’s urban centres or abroad. This was also true for Romain, whose story I began to outline above.

Romain was born and raised in a small city in Xinjiang, also known as the Uyghur region, but pursued his studies in Xi’an, the largest city and cultural centre of northwestern China. His decision to study in another province, particularly in a larger city, was driven by a desire to escape constant parental and societal control, which had prevented him from expressing his gay identity. He shared: ‘Xi’an was still conservative at that time, but it had its advantages: it’s a big city with lots of students and it had already in 2004 many [online] chat rooms, gay websites, bars, saunas, and many gay-related activities.’ By relocating to a larger city, Romain was temporarily shielded from his homophobic family environment, which enabled him to experience relatively greater freedom as a closeted gay man and gain access to the gay scene in China’s urban centres (see Fu 2012).

Although limited and temporary, this freedom fuelled Romain’s desire to go abroad and experience what he envisioned as the ‘Western gay lifestyle’, shaped by his early exposure to gay-themed Western films and TV series with the advent of the internet and communication technologies in twenty-first-century China. During our interview in April 2021, he recalled:

I remember watching the American series Queer as Folk when I was in my third year of university—I didn’t miss a single episode. Of course, I dreamed of this kind of life. I just wanted to go abroad. It felt like a certainty, like the only path for me. My desire to liuxue kept growing stronger.

Queer as Folk was cited often by several of my informants as a striking example of the ‘gay life’ in the West of which they dreamed. For Romain, studying in France represented ‘a concrete and attainable path’ not only to ‘autonomy and liberty’ but also to ‘greater sexual freedom’, all while gaining the prestige of liuxue.

Starting from the late 1970s, China’s Reform and Opening Up (改革开放) brought not only global capitalism, but also sociocultural transformations to post-socialist Chinese society, although without a fundamental shift in the social ethos towards homosexuality or the adoption of equal rights for sexual and gender minorities (Wei 2020). Caught between the contradictions of neoliberal sexual politics—characterised by sexual liberation and the emergence of LGBTQ+ identities—and Confucian familism, which emphasises filial piety, marriage obligations, and family harmony, Chinese LGBTQ+ individuals seek to escape homophobic and heteronormative familial and societal pressures through geographical mobility, whether internal or transnational (see, for instance, Kam 2020; Luo 2022; Miège 2020; Ponce and Chen 2023; Yang 2024). It is worth noting that for Chinese gay youth from privileged backgrounds like Romain, experiencing a ‘liberal and open’ life in the West often becomes a key life aspiration, closely tied to their journey to study abroad, though this motive is rarely disclosed to their families. The decision among Chinese gay youth to study overseas should therefore be understood at the intersection of both the instrumental and the intrinsic values of migration across space and time.

Life-Course Aspirations

The distinction between instrumental and intrinsic values of migration aspiration (see Carling 2024: 1772–74; de Haas 2021: 18–19) marks a significant shift in migration and mobility studies. Scholars increasingly explore multiple drivers of migration from an external perspective while also considering the diverse aspirations and varying capabilities of individuals. The instrumental dimension of migration aspiration—a dominant focus in migration and mobility research—conceptualises migration as a functional or utilitarian strategy aimed at specific goals: escaping war or persecution, securing better wages and living conditions, or achieving upward social mobility. This perspective aligns with rational analyses of migration motivations. In contrast, the intrinsic dimension pertains to the personal values and meanings ascribed to migration—life aspirations that hold inherent significance within lived experiences on the move. The personal pursuit of sexual freedom can be understood as an intrinsic migration aspiration, intricately linked to the instrumental one—namely, social mobility—in the case of the current study. However, distinguishing between instrumental and intrinsic migration aspirations does not imply that they operate independently; rather, they are deeply intertwined and mutually constitutive. While intrinsic aspirations are often overshadowed by more socially acceptable ‘primary’ motivations, seeking a dominant or universal cause risks oversimplifying migration dynamics by imposing a singular ‘root cause’.

When I asked my closeted informants when they would consider coming out to their parents, their answers were remarkably similar: they would only consider disclosing their sexual orientation once they had achieved financial independence, which meant securing a stable, well-paid job, and this decision was further supported by a lasting relationship with their partner. Otherwise, they preferred to live a ‘double life’, concealing their homosexuality from their parents by claiming that they simply did not want to get married. More than just a temporary solution, studying abroad provides some Chinese gay individuals with the opportunity to envision settling permanently in Europe and fully embracing their homosexuality, despite selective migration policies. On the other hand, it also enhances their prospects of securing employment on returning to major Chinese cities. The promising return would allow them to enjoy material comfort and benefit from the more tolerant urban environment, while maintaining a certain distance from their families back home.

Young Chinese gay students deserve to be analysed at the intersection of multiple social positionalities and spheres (King and Raghuram 2013), as well as at the interface of instrumental and intrinsic migration aspirations over their life course (Findlay et al. 2012). Although this essay draws on a microlevel analysis, it is crucial not to overlook the interplay of macrosocial structures (such as social change, norms, and policies), mesolevel factors (including family, social representation, and migration infrastructure), and individual subjectivity, emotions, and agency in understanding the decision-making processes of aspiring migrants (Fresnoza-Flot 2024). Clearly, the experiences of privileged gay international students cannot represent all queer migrants from China, as their migration motivations may differ and be even more complex. Nevertheless, this essay advocates for a holistic approach to understanding the aspirations of China’s gay youth to study abroad, integrating both the instrumental and the intrinsic values of migration throughout the life course.

Acknowledgement

I thank Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot and Nathalie Coulon for their invaluable guidance throughout this research, as well as the Chinese gay migrants who generously shared their migration journeys and life stories. This essay is partially based on my French journal article, ‘“Je veux obtenir mon diplôme et avoir une relation gay”: Aspirations des gays chinois en mobilité pour études en France [“I Want to Graduate and Have a Gay Relationship”: Aspirations of Chinese Gays Studying Abroad in France]’, forthcoming in e-Migrinter. I express my gratitude to Ivan Franceschini and Jan Borrie for carefully editing drafts of this essay.

Featured Image: Summer in Buttes-Chaumont, North of Paris. Source: Marc Barrot (CC), Flickr.com.

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