The Rise and Fall of the World’s Largest Gay Dating App
Not only did Ma land an official partnership with Beijing's CDC, the agency later invited him to the 2012 conference where he unexpectedly connected with Li and told the political leader to his face that he ran a gay website. Li, widely seen as one of the more liberal members of China's ruling elite, responded positively. That single political endorsement helped Blued convince investors that the app wasn't at risk of being shut down, Liu said.
The Empire strikes back
What makes dancing on China's Great Firewall so difficult is that the ground below is inherently unstable: content that is allowed today may suddenly be banned tomorrow.
We broke the news in November that Blued, as well as another gay dating app controlled by the same company, was removed from all mobile app stores in China based on a request from the country's cyberspace administrator. Months later, they still haven't returned. What many people initially hoped was a temporary isolated decision now looks more in line with a broader approach to queer spaces in China. And the longer the platform remains unavailable, the less likely it is that Blued will ever return in a form recognizable to its users.
Blued's fate mirrors that of many tech companies in China. In her book, Liu reported that Ma Baoli's number one entrepreneur idol was Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba. Liu even shadowed Ma Baoli when he attended Hupan University, the highly selective two-year training camp for entrepreneurs that Jack Ma hosted from 2015 to 2021. At that time, Ma Baoli probably could never have expected that his idol would soon become the target of one of the most sweeping regulations in recent Chinese history. No matter how rich or powerful you are, in China you must learn to dance gracefully. One misstep could cost you everything.
But for experienced dancers like Jack and Baoli, failure is only a temporary setback. Jack Ma is now probably back to manage Alibaba's day-to-day affairs as it navigates the highly consequential AI era. Ma Baoli, who was asked to resign from Blued's parent company after its disappointing stock market performance and subsequent takeover, is working on a new social media startup. According to the company's public WeChat account, it has already completed two rounds of fundraising.
The other dancers
Liu's book profiles several other dancers, including a former social media content moderator who quit after he could no longer carry the moral weight of implementing censorship; a feminist activist afraid to return to China after arresting her peers one by one; a former Google employee disillusioned with the tech industry who became a sci-fi novelist; and a rapper who constantly made music that was political, even if it meant the possibility of becoming a mainstream star.
For the majority of people in this group, it has become more difficult to dance in recent years. Beijing has long vacillated between tightly controlling the Internet and allowing relative freedom. But in recent years there is no doubt that the country has gone through a tightening period. As a result, some of Liu's dancers have left China, while others have retreated from the limelight.
