BEIJING - China removed homosexuality from its official register of psychiatric disorders yesterday in what the media hailed as a move toward tolerance and rationality.

But leading psychiatrists continued to describe homosexual acts as "abnormal,'' a view that if anything understates the Chinese public's near-universal hostility towards homosexuals.

The third edition of the Chinese Standards for Classification and Diagnosis of Mental Disorders, published yesterday, formally struck homosexuality from its list of diseases, although same-sex desires remained listed as a source of mental distress for those unhappy with their orientation.

The Chinese Psychiatric Association -- which is under close international scrutiny because of the growing use of mental hospitals to detain dissidents and members of the Falun Gong sect -- voted the change through earlier this year.

The decision followed consultations with the American Psychiatric Association, which struck homosexuality from its own register of diseases in 1973.

However, Chinese newspapers gave considerable space to the views of a senior psychiatrist who called homosexuals "abnormal'' and liable to spread disease through incessant promiscuity.

Prejudice against gays is very strong in China and the number of open homosexuals is minuscule. Communist puritanism means almost all young couples marry before living together, and powerful Confucian traditions state that the worst "unfilial act'' is failing to have a son to carry on the family line.

Homosexuality falls through a legal loophole in China, though until 1997 police would occasionally arrest homosexuals under the charge of "hooliganism.'' However, any public display of homosexuality, let alone activism, would risk immediate detention for "disturbing social order'.'

The first Chinese lesbian festival, being planned in Beijing for next month, will be "strictly underground,'' one participant said, with foreign press strictly banned.

Many Chinese, in fact, insist homosexuality is a purely foreign phenomenon.

A senior Chinese official, discussing AIDS prevention with a visiting foreign official last October solemnly assured her "there were no homosexuals in China.''

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-- Anonymous, April 21, 2001