'No need to feel inferior': China dating app helps raise awareness of LGBT issues
japantimes.co.jpBeijing – Browsing the internet as a young policeman in China, Ma Baoli recalls the sheer volume of web pages telling him he was a pervert, diseased and in need of treatment — simply because he is gay.“I felt extremely lonely after I became aware of my sexual orientation,” says Ma, at the time a newly minted officer in a small coastal city.
Two decades later, the softly spoken 43-year-old now helms Blued, one of the world’s largest dating platforms for gay men.The app went public last July with an $85 million debut on Nasdaq, a remarkable tech success story from a country that classified homosexuality as a mental illness as recently as 2001.Parent company BlueCity’s sunlit Beijing campus teems with young and casually dressed programmers who.
