Gay Games in Hong Kong Postponed to 2023

[PeterRS]

The international Gay Games scheduled for 2022 in Hong Kong have been postponed by a year to November 2023. The pandemic and Hong Kong's very strict quarantine regulations are blamed for the year's delay.  Even fully vaccinated Hong Kong residents have to spend 21 days in a quarantine hotel if they come from high risk countries.

“We want to make sure that everyone is able to come to the event,” Gay games founder and co-chair Dennis Philipse told HKFP. “We cannot be in a bubble event, people cannot be in quarantine for 21 days.” The Games will be the first to be held in Asia.

Organisers won the bid to hold the Games in Hong Kong in 2017. They were expected to have an economic impact of around HK$1 billion (US$128 million), drawing 12,000 participants, 75,000 spectators and 3,000 from 100 countries.

But the successful bid for the Games was slammed by some Beijing lawmakers who were then rebuffed by the city's leader Carrie Lam. Since then Ms. Lam has shown that she is now merely a Beijing puppet. It will be interesting to see whether the Games can actually take place or another reason will be found for their cancellation.

https://hongkongfp.com/2021/09/15/breaking-hong-kong-gay-games-postponed-due-to-covid-travel-restrictions/

[Guest]

Is there any need or benefit from a "Gay Games" ?

If a "Gay Games" is a good idea, it follows that a "Straight Games" is also OK.   One's ability to compete has nothing whatsoever to do with sexual preferences.

Genuine diversity is when all athletes, gay & straight turn up at one Olympic or other event and compete together.  As we see with openly gay athletes winning medals at major events.

[reader]

China's government seems bent on expounding on the virtues of virile, manly men, wholly devoid of the slightest bit of effeminacy.  Such men, they say, are better prepared to defend against any enemy of the state and better suited to lead the economy to new heights. 

It was about 90 years ago that the brash Ernst Rohm was pushing an even more sinister view on homosexuality in pre-war Germany. As commander of the Sturmabteilung (the Nazi party's storm troopers), he charged that that homosexuals were widespread within the party and should be purged. Many suspects were castrated and imprisoned.

But Rohm's fate eventually caught up with him when even Hitler had to acknowledge what was already widely known: Rohm himself was gay. And that wouldn't look good on a resume of the man who commanded a force of over two million of those manly men.

What course China's fledgling campaign against the signs and symptoms of gayness will take remains unknown. Proponents, however, would be well served to be reminded that history frequently repeats itself.

================================

From The Diplomat

Is the CCP About to Rehabilitate the Cultural Revolution?

The official historical narrative – as defined by Xi Jinping – is set to feature prominently at the CCP plenum in November.

There are claims that a new “Resolution on History” may be on the horizon in China. This would revise a previous “Resolution on History” issued under Deng Xiaoping in 1981 criticizing the Cultural Revolution.

“Questions of the party’s historical experience and major successes” and “summarizing the 100-year struggle” will be the focus of the Sixth Plenum of the 19th Party Congress scheduled for November, according to a Xinhua report on August 31.

Following Xinhua, on September 1 privately owned New York-based media company Duowei News claimed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a third “Resolution on History” in the works, citing unnamed sources “closely involved in party governance.”

Deng Yuwen, who formerly edited the CCP newspaper Study Times but is now frequently critical of the party, argued that a “Third Resolution on History” is likely in an op-ed for Deutsche Welle Chinese last week.

According to Deng, proposing a “Resolution on History” would be a risky move for Xi, revealing his insecurity, but if successful could help to reinforce his power and address lingering dissatisfaction over his removal of term limits. “Although Xi could completely ignore these questions [over his abolition of term limits] … to do so would undermine him among skeptics in the party, of whom there are more than a few, including at an elite level.”

The backdrop to the announcement of the Sixth Plenum’s focus on history and “struggle” includes a firebrand essay published in official media earlier in the month, titled “Everyone can sense that a profound transformation is underway.”

The piece, written by ultra-leftist Li Guangman, praised the CCP’s crackdown on what Li described as “capitalist cliques” and “sissyboy celebrities.” It first appeared on an obscure blog but was republished in edited form by outlets including The People’s Daily, the CCP’s official mouthpiece.

Talk of a “Cultural Revolution 2.0” is underway on Chinese discussion forums beyond the reach of China’s censors.

According to Deng Yuwen, a “New Cultural Revolution” is the wrong label for Xi’s program as it ignores the fact that the maintenance of stability remains a high priority.

“A more appropriate description for what Xi thinks he is doing is ‘Creating a Clean Society’,” said Deng in a YouTube broadcast on Tuesday. “He doesn’t want to hand over an ‘unclean’ society to the next generation of the CCP.”

https://thediplomat.com/2021/09/is-the-ccp-about-to-rehabilitate-the-cultural-revolution/

[PeterRS]

2 hours ago, z909 said:

Is there any need or benefit from a "Gay Games" ?

As you assume not, then I assume you also see no point in Gay Pride Parades and see no difference in them from ordinary Parades. Having been to quite a few Gay Pride Parades and had such fun, I could not agree less.

[Lonnie]

I'm afraid Xi wants to be the new Mao and will use gay people among others to achieve his goal...let's hope I'm wrong.

[PeterRS]

10 hours ago, Lonnie said:

I'm afraid Xi wants to be the new Mao and will use gay people among others to achieve his goal...let's hope I'm wrong.

I don't see developments in Beijing quite in the same light. Xi is clearly the leader and he has managed to clear out many of the anti-Xi faction. Many were crooks anyway and their jailing for massive corruption could lin other circumstances be seen as a good thing. But he is walking a very fine line between hardliners and reformers. There are many who would love to see him kicked out of the way. He surely realised this considering one of his first major actions was a major reshuffle of the Central Security Bureau in 2015.

When he came to power, those who elected him did so primarily on the basis of his three promises -

* to end poverty by 2020

* to position China as a superpower

* to complete the Belt and Road Initiative (this consists of the Silk Road Economic Belt and a 21st century Silk Road: together they are intended to link 65 countries involving 4.4 billion people and 29% of global GDP)

He has not fulfilled any of these promises. Admittedly Covid19 upended a lot of his planning and pushed the timetable back. But he is probably the first Chinese leader since Deng to see poverty rates rise. The BRI has also hit several major roadblocks with some countries pulling out of earlier agreements and some, like Sri Lanka, in trouble because it can not pay back the huge loans from China for its BRI infrastructure developments. It has sometimes been labelled a "Chinese Debt Trap" although some economists dispute this.

So whilst the ground beneath Xi's feet is not yet made up of eggshells, he is nowhere near as secure as he wants the west to believe. What we must hope is that if he is pushed aside, he is succeeded by a Deng-like reformer rather than an even more hard-liner.

As for gays, there seems to be no evidence yet that he is starting an anti-LGBT campaign. One of the world's largest and most popular gay apps Blued still operates out of Beijing with at least one state company as an investor.

[spoon]

37 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

As for gays, there seems to be no evidence yet that he is starting an anti-LGBT campaign. One of the world's largest and most popular gay apps Blued still operates out of Beijing with at least one state company as an investor.

There is a crackdown in the entertainment industry with the most recent is banning of all BL type drama and effeminate actor as the gov view it as corrupting the mind of the youth.

Source

[PeterRS]

1 hour ago, spoon said:

There is a crackdown in the entertainment industry with the most recent is banning of all BL type drama and effeminate actor as the gov view it as corrupting the mind of the youth.

Source

As you point out, the recent moves are aimed at the entertainment industry.

"The moves are part of discouraging what it sees as unhealthy attention to celebrities and certain distracting activities."

Although gays are sometimes referred as "sissy", that is rarely the case in China as very few gay men adopt such characteristics. As for BL dramas, that is surely hardly surprising in a country which has little experience of such dramas. Precisely the same was true in Thailand when they first were aired. In fact, many producers avoided the BL genre until they eventually realised they were extremely popular with young girls and therefore very profitable!

It is certainly true that some LGBT groups at major universities have had their social media accounts shut down, notably on WeChat and Weibo. Other users have allegedly complained about the rising number of such groups. One user, according to the BBC website, stated,

"I don't mind it if the LGBT community quietly does their own thing, but why do they have to keep shoving their ideals in my face through these groups? It's right to shut them down," one person said on Weibo.

I believe the general sentiment expressed in that post - whoever actually posted it - summarises the view of a big majority of Chinese  Do your own thing - but do it out of the public eye. Presently there is little indication that this is the start of a larger reaching LGBT crackdown. If there were a crackdown in the works, the gay social app Blued would surely be one of the first to curtail its activities. From the documents filed at the time of its NASDAQ IPO a year ago, 51% of its members were inside China - 25 million out of 49 million total. After all it is a Chinese company based in Beijing. The numbers in the websites that have been taken down will be infinitesimal compared to the total number of Blued members. Let's also remember that Weibo announced in 2018 it would take down all gay-related posts. This received such a massive response against the move that gay content was reinstated. 

From what my friends have told me, gay bars and discos in Beijing and Shanghai are still operating as normal, except when ordered closed due to covid regulations. The large Destination in Beijing remains one of the major Asian gay clubs.

[Lonnie]

9 hours ago, PeterRS said:

As for gays, there seems to be no evidence yet that he is starting an anti-LGBT campaign. One of the world's largest and most popular gay apps Blued still operates out of Beijing with at least one state company as an investor.

I didn't know it was based in China so that is encouraging, thanks. I read in the Guardian that Chairman Xi's writings are being emphasized and taught in all schools. Is this replacing the Little Red Book?

[Lonnie]

In all my pessimism about the world's indifference to Chinese expansion there is this tiny reed of hope.

 

China has told the US, the UK and Australia to abandon their “cold war” mentality or risk harming their own interests after the three countries unveiled a new defence cooperation pact.

The trilateral security partnership, named Aukus, was announced on Thursday by the three nations’ leaders via video link, and will include an 18-month plan to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines.

 

It drew strong political reaction domestically in Australia and the UK, and from France, whose existing $90bn (£65bn) submarine contract with Australia has now come to an abrupt end.

While none of the three western leaders involved mentioned China, the arrangement is widely understood to be in response to Beijing’s expansionism and aggression in the South China Sea and towards Taiwan. The US president, Joe Biden, spoke of the need to maintain a “free and open Indo-Pacific” and to address the region’s “current strategic environment”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/16/cold-war-mentality-china-criticises-aukus-us-uk-australia-submarine-pact

[Lucky]

On 9/15/2021 at 4:03 AM, z909 said:

Is there any need or benefit from a "Gay Games" ?

If a "Gay Games" is a good idea, it follows that a "Straight Games" is also OK.   One's ability to compete has nothing whatsoever to do with sexual preferences.

Genuine diversity is when all athletes, gay & straight turn up at one Olympic or other event and compete together.  As we see with openly gay athletes winning medals at major events.

One reason for the Gay Games is that straight games have dominated for centuries. Gays haven't been allowed, unless totally closeted. I found this post hard to believe because I just cannot imagine a gay guy not understanding this.

[PeterRS]

2 hours ago, Lonnie said:

I didn't know it was based in China so that is encouraging, thanks. I read in the Guardian that Chairman Xi's writings are being emphasized and taught in all schools. Is this replacing the Little Red Book?

The little Red Book of Mao's sayings all but disappeared decades ago. It is now largely a collector's item. After the Cultural Revolution, the leadership passed to Hua Guo-feng, Mao's chosen successor. But he was quickly eased out and Deng Xiao-ping the reformer effectively took over in all but name two years into Hua's Chairmanship. Deng had suffered considerably during Mao's mad campaigns and his fear of his leadership colleagues. When he took the top job Deng determined that China should never again have a personality cult in the leadership and got Politburo agreement. Although hugely popular when he died, Deng left instructions that he was to be cremated and his ashes scattered in the sea. He wanted no monument, nowhere Chinese people could come to pay respects to his memory. His wishes were fulfilled.

Xi has broken Deng's rule and persuaded his colleagues of the need once agin for a leadership cult, seemingly without opposition. How long it will last, who knows?

[Lonnie]

13 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

a leadership cult

Thanks for updating my thinking on what's being taught in Chinese schools...good to know someone whose aware of the facts.  I read in the South China Post that Mao's poems are required reading...his poetry must be less ideological?

 

[PeterRS]

I had no idea that Mao's poetry was required reading in schools and I can find no reference to this. Frankly, experts agree that Mao was anything but a great poet. I like the description of his literary attempts by an eminent British translator of Chinese literature, "not as bad as Hitler's paintings but not as good as Churchill's!". But it has since been discovered that Mao actually stole some of his Cultural Revolution poems from the poet Chen Mingyuan. Chen later refused to deny that he was the author in an edition of the Beijing Review in 1986. When he earlier discovered Mao's theft of his work, he wrote to Mao's right hand man, the much respected Chou En-lai. Chou said Chen should not be punished for speaking out. But that did not happen, Chen endured a dozen years of misery that included imprisonment and four years of hard labour. Like many in those years, he attempted suicide.

Your mention of poetry sparkes a memory. One of the foremost poets in Chinese arts and literature in the first half of the century was Guo Moruo. He was even called China's Goethe. In his famous Book of Poems published in 1920, he proved to be a passionate champion of creativity and individualism. Although from a wealthy family, he eventually sided with the Mao's communists. He was appointed Head of Propaganda. After the success of the Revolution, he was given various senior Party posts. But many of Mao's contemporaries felt his Party credentials were not sufficient and criticised him. Mao shielded him. "His merits outweigh his demerits," he is alleged to have said . 

During the Cultural Revolution, crowds started to mass outside his house. He bent with the wind and started writing poetry praising Mao and his dreadful wife Jiang Qing. Even so, two of his sons were murdered. Once the carnage of that dreadful period was finally over, by 1978, he returned to his former lifestyle and attempted through his poetry to revert to his former style. In his eulogy after he died, Deng Xiao-ping lauded Guo's "infinite loyalty". Yet as so often happened, the Cultural Revolution had virtually devoured one of its own. Fortunately Guo remains once again revered in China and his home in Beijing is now a Museum.

[caeron]

 

China is mess, and I want nothing to do with it. They're assholes to everyone around them, and to their own people. The fact that my nation often sucks too, doesn't mean I can't judge them as well.

[PeterRS]

3 hours ago, caeron said:

 

China is mess, and I want nothing to do with it. They're assholes to everyone around them, and to their own people. The fact that my nation often sucks too, doesn't mean I can't judge them as well.

A lot of countries are in a mess and there is nothing wrong with judging them. But I do believe it helps if that judgement is made after knowing something about the country they are trashing, its history, society, economic development etc. Having first visited China in September 1980 and over many dozens of future visits, including some extensive ones for work, I think it is wrong, as I have stated somewhere else on this forum recently, to judge any country not in the west by western standards.

I don't believe the Being government is seen as assholes by its own people. Other Asian countries have gladly accepted China's financial largesse and the huge number of tourists it sent out pre-covid and the many more who will eventually travel if covid ever gets under control. We may thoroughly dislike, even loathe, its leadership for the way it conducts itself internationally. But that is not a reason for trashing an entire country, in my view. I disliked Trump to the point of utter loathing and I still fail to understand why Americans could even consider voting for him. That the majority of Republican Congressmen and Senators regard him as some sort of saviour after all his lies, his bullying and goodness knows what else is something I find totally mad. I think Boris Johnson is a total buffoon who should never have got within a million miles of the British Prime Ministership. I have almost nothing good to say about the government of Thailand, and little more about that of Japan. These, though, are not reasons for calling their countries assholes IMHO.

[caeron]

I believe China holds foreign nationals as political prisoners (Canadians attempting to apply leverage to the Huawei thing). While I'm a civilian, my family includes people who aren't. There simply isn't the rule of law in the country when the powers that be deem it should be otherwise. China is a typical authoritarian regime. They dress themselves up nicely, but underneath that, there is nothing that stops the authorities from doing whatever the hell they want to you.

As I've gotten older, my interest in engaging with these kinds of regimes has significantly diminished and my interest in placing myself in a position where that kind of power might be wielded against me. While the odds of that seem low, there are plenty of other places in the world where that isn't true. Maybe some day it will be different and I will go back.

Your mileage may vary.

 

[PeterRS]

My mileage and my views do vary to a certain extent. Perhaps one reason might be that I have travelled expensively. I have already mentioned the advances in China since first visit in 1980 to my most recent visit to Beijing pre-covid. As also mentioned, I believe you have to separate the people from the governments. The same was true when i was visiting Manila several times during the Marcos years in the early 1980s. He was a murdering, kleptomaniac dictator through and through but the average Filipino paid little attention. In the same time frame I was in Seoul at least a dozen times during martial law. Had I been out in the street before the midnight curfew, I could have been shot. But life for most Koreans did not reflect their leaders. Similarly I was in Taipei which did not get rid of martial law until 1987. It seemed to affect few Taiwanese who were always extremely friendly and open. 

I was in Moscow and St. Petersburg towards the end of the communist years. Those times were indeed oppressive and the people I met seemed less than welcoming. Yet I returned to both cities in 2010 and 2013 respectively and found massive changes. Especially in St. Petersburg, everyone was much more open and happy to come up and chat to strangers, even just when we were on a tram. Yet I absolutely dislike Putin and his regime.

Most recently I was in Iran for a couple of weeks. It is a fabulous country and the people were extraordinarily friendly to this westerner, despite all the sanctions the west has imposed on them. Interestingly, everyone I spoke to on the streets, in the bazaars and hotels seemed to loathe their regime and were quite open about the vast corruption of the leadership. Once again I believe you must separate the people from regimes.

The one country wild horses would not drag me to is North Korea for pretty obvious reasons.

[caeron]

 

I do separate the people from the government. It isn't the people I don't trust, it's a government that committed the Tiananmen massacre. Their recent actions in Hong Kong show to me that they haven't changed. Their arrest of Canadians in a naked attempt to force the Canadian government to subvert their own justice system is just more proof of the type of regime it is.

Iran also has locked up civilians trying to get leverage with their governments. With my familial ties to the military and the intelligence community, I am not willing to risk going and getting turned into a pawn. I hope it changes one day, since I'd very much like to visit, but with the current political situation, I think it unwise.

Others with no such concerns may find the risks acceptable. 

 

 

[PeterRS]

We're obviously more or less on the same page. I abhor what China has been doing to the Uigyurs, its posturing against Taiwan (even though the legal status of Taiwan is very murky and it seems China does indeed have a legitimate claim as a result of agreements made by Churchill, Roosevelt and Chiang about returning all Japan's wartime conquests to the countries which governed them beforehand) and especially Hong Kong. In Hong Kong it seems to have broken international treaties and agreements that are lodged with the United Nations. Britain, the other party to those agreements, has done virtually nothing to stop China.

Like many, I always thought that China would go all out in an attempt to make Deng's one-country-two-systems work and be seen to work. Had that happened, I suspect it could have been the only way Taiwan might eventually have considered a similar arrangement. That is now dead and only war will get Taiwan back into Beijing's grasp. Hopefully the present statement will just continue ad infinitum.

As for Iran, I was extremely fortunate to visit when I did. Had I waited even a few months, I think the international situation would have made it too difficult.

Lastly, the Tiananmen massacre - or as many historians refer to it, the Tiananmen "incident" - was utterly appalling. I would in no way do anything but condemn those who made it happen. Yet, I recommend everyone to read much more about it because it was not a long thought through cut-and-dried means to end the demonstrations. Very sadly it was a confluence of events that blew up relatively quickly. It started with just one seemingly insignificant event, the death of the ousted reformer General Secretary of the Party Hu Yao-bang in April that year. Thereafter it led to small protests about living conditions in Beijing's universities.As the protests increased, within the leadership there was an internal battle between the reformers whom Deng had placed in plower and the old guard led by the vile Prime Minister Li Peng. Whatever the background, though, the result was a stain that peole still only whisper about within China.

But let's not forget that other countries have shot down their own students in cold blood simply for demonstrating. Does anyone remember Kent State University and the protests against the Vietnam War when National Guard troopers fired live rounds directly at student demonstrators? This is now called the Kent State massacre. Admittedly the scale was vastly smaller than Tiananmen Square but four innocent students were murdered and nine wounded, one permanently paralysed. 

And why do we today openly talk about the Tiananmen massacre when so few in Thailand talk about the Thammasat student massacre in 1976? This from TIME magazine. 

"With thousands of students under siege, authorities opened fire onto the campus with M-16s, recoilless rifles and grenades. For several hours, these forces — later joined by vigilantes — shot, beat, raped and murdered unarmed students, some as they tried to either flee or surrender. The chaos was used to justify a military coup later that same day.

"Official figures put the death toll at 46, with 167 wounded and more than 3,000 students arrested. The death toll is disputed to this day, with survivors putting it at more like 100."

Yet outside Thailand this is regarded as a peaceful country. If China is condemned for shooting its own students, why are Thailand and the United States not similarly condemned? And why does the world keep turning its back on the deadly unprovoked rampage of school shootings in the USA? There are mad people everywhere, not just in China.

https://time.com/4519367/thailand-bangkok-october-6-1976-thammasat-massacre-students-joshua-wong/