Beijing is facing two important test cases on gay and transgender rights this week as China’s traditionally conservative attitudes to sexual and gender orientation are transformed by economic development and globalisation.

A court in the central Chinese city of Changsha will on Wednesday hear what could be the country’s first gay marriage case. Sun Wenlin, a 27-year-old employee of an internet company, is asking the court to overrule a local authority that denied him the right to marry his partner, a 37-year-old security guard he met online. Mr Sun’s case argues that Chinese law does not specify that marriage must be between a man and a woman, it only calls for marriage between “one husband and one wife”.

Mr Sun’s lawyer, Shi Fulong, says he cannot predict success but the case will at least raise the public profile of the issue. “This is the first case of its kind in China?.?.?.?A problem can’t be solved if no one knows about it,” he told the Financial Times in an interview.