How Hong Kong has squandered the Gay Games

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In October, 2017, Dennis Philipse was sitting next to Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, D.C., in a conference hall in Paris, as they waited to hear which city would host the 11th Gay Games.

The Dutch-born Hong Konger was so nervous he couldn’t stop moving – his colleague had to tell him to be still several times – and when it was announced that his team’s bid had won, that the LGBTQ sporting event would be coming to Asia for the first time, Mr. Philipse leapt to his feet, hugging anyone in sight.

“It was like building an aeroplane while flying it,” Mr. Philipse said of the bidding process. “But everyone believed in it with a passion. Two-thirds of the world’s population lives in Asia, but being gay in Asia is still a challenge for many people, and we thought this could really help to change that.”

After a year-long delay, the Hong Kong Gay Games will finally kick off Nov. 3, but in severely reduced form. Hosting duties have been split with Guadalajara, Mexico, which is where the bulk of events and participants will be this month. Whereas the original 2016 bid predicted Hong Kong could attract as many as 15,000 participants, organizers now say only about 2,200 will compete in the Chinese territory, the majority of them local residents. (A further 4,000 people are expected to take part in Guadalajara.)

Much of this is due to the pandemic. Hong Kong did not lift its stringent COVID-19 controls, including a mandatory quarantine for travellers, until January, 2023, so Guadalajara was chosen as a potential substitute in order to avoid further delay. When Hong Kong reopened, it was decided to split the hosting duties, but distance and logistical challenges mean there will be “two self-contained events under the Gay Games umbrella,” organizers said, rather than a single competition across two cities.

Many members of the original bid team, including Mr. Philipse, are no longer involved, and some have suggested privately that the event should have been called off entirely.

The damage to Hong Kong’s image during the pandemic – stories of quarantine and travel chaos – continues to have an effect on tourism and almost certainly reduced the number of people willing to take part in a sporting event in one of the world’s most expensive cities.

But in interviews with organizers, participants, academics and foreign diplomats, many placed the blame for the Hong Kong Gay Games failing to live up to their potential at the feet of the local government, which has kept the LGBTQ event at arm’s length and failed to address concerns about how a draconian national security law introduced in 2020 could affect participants and supporters.

“The government response has been very lukewarm and confused,” said Yiu Tung Suen, a gender studies professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Pointing to ongoing campaigns to bring in more visitors, he said the Gay Games “could have been an opportunity to sell Hong Kong to LGBTQ+ tourists,” as other territories have done, but there appears to be no enthusiasm for such an approach.

The original Hong Kong bid book included letters of support from several government bodies, lawmakers and major businesses. While this fell short of bids from other cities – Ms. Bowser led her city’s bid, and the mayor of Paris threw herself behind hosting the Games in 2018 – it was felt that, given the slow but steady progress Hong Kong was making on LGBTQ rights, official enthusiasm would have grown by the time the event rolled around.

Hong Kong has indeed made considerable progress in the intervening years – on gender recognition and inheritance, parental and housing rights for LGBTQ couples – and is moving toward a framework for same-sex partnerships. But all of this has been driven by the city’s courts rather than the legislature or government, said Prof. Suen.

Indeed, the government has fought several landmark rulings all the way to the Court of Final Appeal, often going against majority public opinion.

“Even for same-sex marriage, support is over 60 per cent, which is pretty high for Asia,” said Prof. Suen. “The private sector is very supportive compared to a decade ago, when they would be worried about touching this issue. Nowadays they’re worried about not being seen to do enough.”

Four government organizations – Brand Hong Kong, InvestHK, the Hong Kong Tourism Board and the Equal Opportunities Commission – are listed as “supporting organizations” on the Gay Games website. But of these, only the EOC has openly promoted the event, which has not received any government funding or assistance in booking sporting venues, most of which are operated by the city.

Lisa Lam, co-chair of the Gay Games, acknowledged that the level of support from the government was not equivalent to that seen in Paris or previous events in the U.S. But she said community and business engagement has been “very, very encouraging.” Dozens of companies have signed up as sponsors, and hundreds of volunteers will take part.

Reasons for the government’s hesitancy on LGBTQ issues is unclear, though in the past officials have said same-sex marriage is “controversial” and expressed sympathy for religious conservatives. The past few years have also seen a rollback of LGBTQ rights in mainland China, amid a wider crackdown on civil society and a push for traditional gender roles in response to falling fertility rates.

Asked to comment on the Games, a government spokesperson focused solely on the organizers’ responsibilities to comply with Hong Kong laws and regulations. This is in stark contrast to the effusive statements released around the Asian Games, hosted this year in Guangzhou, China, the annual Rugby Sevens tournament or various business and finance forums held in the city.

The government’s response has done little to reassure those inclined to stay away for fear of breaching the national security law, however. As early as 2021, athletes from Taiwan – the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage – said they would not participate due to safety concerns. China claims self-ruled Taiwan as its territory, bans flying its flag and forces it to compete in the Olympics and other events as “Chinese Taipei.”

In June, five LGBTQ activists published an open letter calling for the Gay Games to be cancelled over safety fears, accusing the organizers of minimizing the risks and having “aligned themselves with pro-authoritarian figures responsible for widespread persecution against the people of Hong Kong.”

“It is a pink washing of the current situation in Hong Kong,” said signatory Alex Chan, a Canadian-based organizer of Students for Hong Kong. She added that it was “absolutely ridiculous to pretend that all is well and normal” when the city’s two most prominent LGBTQ activists – former lawmakers Raymond Chan and Jimmy Sham – are facing prosecution under the national security law.

Ms. Lam said she was aware that “there are some in the community who would like the Gay Games to be more political,” but the organizers have “chosen to focus on sports, arts and culture” and work with a wide range of stakeholders and allies to pull the event off.

Growing up, she said, there was “no voice, no representation. If you were lesbian it meant having a miserable life,” so the Games were an opportunity to celebrate how far Hong Kong has come since then, and maybe push the envelope further.

“Yes, it is much smaller than we originally hoped in 2016, but the purpose has not changed,” she said. “It’s still the first Gay Games in Asia, and for people not just in Hong Kong, but across Asia, it can be a very meaningful event.”