Have Chinese Perceptions Towards Homosexuality Become More or Less Conservative?

Throughout China's history homosexuality has been tolerated but in the twentieth century this dramatically changed to a more conservative culture. But the proposition that homosexuality was completely tolerated in traditional china must be qualified by the arguments that a more conservative shift had already begun to occur in the Qing dynasty, that the submissive homosexual partner was not accepted and that men were forced to be bisexual in order to procreate.
Since China's early dynasties male homosexuality was widely tolerated (at least among the upper classes) but western influences in the early twentieth century began to make attitudes more conservative. Since the late Zhou dynasty there is written evidence of homosexuality being part of the sex life of many rulers. This was regarded as unexceptional and needing no justification. By the Song dynasty, literary accounts had broadened slightly to include accounts of male prostitutes living in the Song capital. The high profile of these prostitutes caused the Song dynasty to take some action against them but the punishments were comparatively lenient and rarely enforced. …