Thus, this paper posits that the modern understanding of tongqhi signifies the ideological formation of Communist comradeship and homosocialist bonding, exposing homoerotic tensions at the core of China's socialist ideology. "Commitment" subversively repositions homosexual characters traditionally oppressed by China's Communist regime within the figure of a military comrade who is closely associated with that persecuting authority. A close analysis of "Commitment" (2008) by Qing Feng, with a focus on the shifting relationship berween the rwo male protagonists, presents a novel perspective on the nexus of homosocial friendship and homosexual desire in the Chinese context. This Paper considers the ramifications of homosexual characters disrupting the Chinese heteronormative power paradigm when they serve in the military. These stories address the ambiguous sphere of homosociality in the Chinese military experience by featuring tongqhi as men serving in China's national army, playing with the dual identification of tongqhi associated with both military comrades and gay men. Īs a sub-genre of online Comrade Literature, Military Comrade Stories from mainland China stand out as a body of fiction that is direcdy concerned with the ramifications of social control in Chinese sociery. These fiction renegotiate the boundary between heterosexual and homosexual behaviors, establishing a unique tongzhi identity that is at once assimilated into yet differentiated from mainstream Chinese heteronormative society to challenge hegemonic norms. Collectively, these four works span a stylistic and temporal timeline that reflect developments in the tongzhi subculture on the Mainland. The three chapters in this thesis will each examine distinct aspects of China’s Comrade Literature: 1) gender performance in same-sex romance narratives, 2) homosexual abjection in Comrade bildungsroman, and 3) the continuum of homosocial and homosexual intimacy in military Comrade fiction. A close analysis of four online Comrade stories focuses on the representation of male same-sex relations, turning a critical eye to the logics of these texts as tongzhi write out of a heteronormative milieu. In addition to providing a catalyst for the local tongzhi subculture, Comrade fiction in Mainland China capitalizes on new media platforms to present same-sex desire to the broader public. This thesis contends that online Comrade stories are not simply an expression of an underground Chinese gay culture they are complex cultural texts with deeper meanings as a site of queer resistance facilitating the intersection of homosexual and heterosexual subjectivities. There are now hundreds and thousands of stories designated as “Comrade Novels” (同志小说 tongzhi xiaoshuo) archived on various Chinese websites. Although Comrade Literature first emerged in Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1980s, it was only after the mid-1990s with the advent of the internet that these gay-themed fiction were disseminated online in Mainland China. This thesis considers Comrade Literature (同志文学tongzhi wenxue), a genre of contemporary Chinese homosexual (tongzhi) fiction, as it has emerged on the internet in Mainland China.
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