In this groundbreaking book on the making and remaking of sexual citizenship amongst Chinese gay men in Hong Kong, London and China, Travis Kong presents a powerful “politics of difference” that rethinks Chinese queer politics, identities, practices and desires in ways that reject, on the one hand, portrayals of Chinese gay men as passive followers of Western gay culture and, on the other, the attempts to retrieve an “authentic,” singular Chinese homosexual tradition. He punctures assumptions about the universal applicability of Western queer models in his chapters on Hong Kong, showing that queer cultural production in the media and popular culture, rather than queer political activism, has created a significant space for challenging heterosexual norms, and has transformed the image of gay men from deviant to cosmopolitan subject. Moreover, he undermines notions of stable, unchanging Chineseness by drawing on deconstruction, queer theory and Black feminist thought on intersectionality to bring a non-essentialist theorization of identity to bear upon his material on Chinese gay men in different locales.

Tracing the flow of three “traffics” of queer cultures, from the West to Hong Kong and China, Hong Kong to London, and between Hong Kong and China, Kong employs interviews, life histories and ethnography to investigate the interactions between personal biographies, social institutions and wider transnational processes. From life-history interviews with 60 Chinese gay men of diverse backgrounds and ages in Hong Kong, London and Guangzhou, and interviews with 30 young “money boys” (gay male prostitutes) in Beijing and Shanghai, conducted at various times between 1997 and 2008, Kong sets out “sexual stories” bounded in space and time that challenge assumptions about masculine and gay identities, including those of queer theory itself. He intertwines his own “transnational queer biography” with that of his informants, as a gay Chinese man born and bred in Hong Kong, a student of sexualities in London, and subsequently a researcher of sexualities in China, while living and teaching in Hong Kong.

To show the different effects of transnational processes on Chinese gay men, Kong takes up Foucault's ideas of biopolitics, governmentality, techniques of the self and the power-resistance paradigm. He demonstrates how his informants mediate “scattered hegemonies” (patriarchy, nationalism, racism, cosmopolitanism, hegemonic masculinity, etc.) at institutional, community and personal levels, in processes of “being-made” and “self-making,” and in so doing create “counterpublics” of oppositional discourses. He examines these processes in the light of five key debates about sexual citizenship: the extent to which lesbian and gay political rights-based assimilation politics replicates or subverts heterosexualization; the extent to which commercial queer culture fosters sexual rights and a sense of belonging or marginalizes non consumer-based notions of citizenship; how the “coming out” model may marginalize alternative strategies of identity and practice; how neoliberal regulation of sexuality distinguishes between “good” and “bad” sexual citizenships; and finally, the extent to which global queer culture acts as both a unifying and dividing force along, for example, class and ethnic lines.

In three chapters on Hong Kong, Kong argues that sexual citizenship is made and remade within the confines of three spaces: a vibrant tongzhi (queer) cultural world, which is nonetheless subject to neoliberal governance and commercial pressures, as well as assaults from conservative Christian organizations; flourishing queer commercial venues that shape gay, “memba” (a Cantonese derivative of “member”) identities along homonormative, consumer-based lines; and personal spaces of intimate relationships, which are governed by heteronormative “family biopolitics.” On an upbeat note, Kong views queer activists' own recent formulation of a nuanced politics of difference, and their reaching out to other queer and non-queer groups, as the beginnings of a promising new democratic movement. In one chapter on London, he argues that queer Hong Kong migrant men, along with other ethnic minorities, are subject to a hierarchical “ethnocracy” that privileges British citizens. They are, however, able to benefit from the British lesbian and gay movement's successes, such as the Civil Partnership Act 2004, and the vibrant queer subcultures in London, although they are also subject to widespread sexual stereotyping within the British gay community as silent, feminine “golden boys,” in contrast to hegemonic white, middle-class bodies. In two chapters on China, Kong argues that due to recent shifts in sexual cultures influenced by global capitalism, state socialism, the market economy and familial patriarchy, tongzhi identity has moved from a characterization of medicalized deviancy to one that emphasizes a cultured, individualistic urbanity. He shows that the “money boys,” in their almost hopeless quest for this new tongzhi identity, are subject to multiple discriminations, including within the gay community, as rural-to-urban migrants, men who sell sex, and men who have sex with men.

Those interested in analysis of Taiwanese homosexualities will not find any here, and the chapter on London does not include gay migrants from mainland China. Furthermore, the book does not investigate the negative relational effects on women (as lesbians, wives, girlfriends, sisters, daughters, etc.) of Chinese gay men's participation in hegemonic masculine practices, although it acknowledges their existence; but that, no doubt, deserves a separate study.

This book charts new territory in Chinese studies in the scope of its multi-site approach to the study of Chinese homosexualities, and is written with a lightness of hand that balances a complex analytical framework with lively interview data. Its readability ensures its easy application in undergraduate teaching, and its sophisticated interweaving of empirical data and theoretical analysis is a “textbook” example for researchers. It makes significant contributions to the sociology of homosexuality, “new queer Asia studies” and, more widely, non-Western, non-normative gender and sexuality studies, as well as debates on globalization and sexual citizenship.