Anti-discrimination law (反歧视法)

Anti-discrimination laws explicitly prohibit unjustified differential treatment — in employment, education, services — based on protected characteristics such as sex, disability, race, and, where included, sexual orientation and gender identity. Whether “sexual orientation and gender identity” appear on the protected list is a standard yardstick for a jurisdiction’s level of LGBTQ+ legal protection.

The picture differs sharply across the region, so describe each place separately. Mainland China currently has no national anti-discrimination legislation that names sexual orientation or gender identity, and the equal-employment clauses in its labor laws do not enumerate them either; there are publicly reported cases of sexual and gender minority individuals winning through general avenues like labor dispute litigation, but individual remedies are not systemic protection. Taiwan’s legislation in education and employment explicitly lists sexual orientation as a prohibited ground of discrimination. Hong Kong’s existing anti-discrimination ordinances cover sex, disability, family status, and race — not sexual orientation or gender identity — and legislative proposals have been debated for years without passing.

Register note: legal and policy vocabulary. “No explicit protection” does not mean “discrimination is legal”: general personality-rights and labor-rights provisions can still offer partial remedies, just with higher thresholds and less certainty.

Common misreading: first, the sweeping claim that “Chinese societies have no anti-discrimination protection” — the three jurisdictions differ substantially. Second, framing such laws as “special privileges” — they protect anyone from being treated worse for a listed trait, on exactly the same logic as protections for sex or disability. See also the Yogyakarta Principles and SOGIE.