Searching for the Rainbow Connection: Regional Development and LGBT Communities in China.

China is estimated to have 70 million lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and in recent decades, the LGBT movement has seen rapid growth. However, because of the unavailability of data, a comprehensive understanding of the degree of regional development of the Chinese LGBT movement has been unavailable. By analyzing keyword search volumes for LGBT-related terms on Baidu (the largest internet search engine in China) from 2009 through 2015, we have produced the first representative and longitudinal portrait of LGBT orientation across the country. Our data revealed that the level of LGBT orientation search index in a province is significantly correlated with modernization and cultural capital stock factors, such as GDP per capita, resident income level, openness to foreign culture, and local cultural infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]