Speaker: Xiaogang
Job title: Président
Company: China Rainbow Collective Foundation

About the spreaker
Xiaogang Wei was born and raised in Xinjiang, China, and is now based in France. He has been engaged in media production and social movement work in China since 1998. In 2007, he founded the pioneering LGBTQ webcast Queer Comrades, through which he directed and hosted more than 400 videos, reaching over 50 million views and playing a formative role in shaping queer visibility in China’s digital public sphere. Until 2019, he served as Executive Director of Beijing Gender, the first Chinese NGO dedicated to gender, sexuality, and sexual health. Through this work, he helped initiate a series of landmark programmes and events, including Queer University, the China AIDS Walk, the China Rainbow Awards, the China LGBTI Conference, and the All Gender Toilet Program. Today, he is a member of the organizing committee of the Beijing Queer Film Festival and the founder and president of the China Rainbow Collective Foundation (CRCF), which mobilizes resources for the Chinese LGBTI+ movement and builds international connections. His work has been internationally recognized, including the Vanguard Award from the LA LGBT Center (2013), the Human Rights Prize of the French Republic (2018), and inclusion in the book 50 LGBTQI+ Who Changed the World (2023).