Hong Kong: The gay Hong Kong Chinese men afraid to come out to their families, and why parents need educating to accept them

It’s a disturbing set of statistics. HIV diagnosis rates in Hong Kong have climbed over the past decade, unlike in other places in the world where there has been a consistent fall in the numbers of new HIV cases.

Between 2010 and 2016, the annual number of new HIV diagnoses in Hong Kong increased by nearly 80 per cent, to a total of 692 new cases in 2016. By contrast, between 2010 and 2017, the annual rate of new HIV diagnoses declined by 14 per cent in Asia and the Pacific as a whole.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s annual government expenditure on HIV prevention policies has soared in an attempt to address this entrenched health scourge. By 2020, prevention costs are projected to reach HK$400 million. Statistics show a solid majority of HIV diagnoses in Hong Kong have been in the group of men who have sex with men (MSM). Dr Tim Brown, HIV epidemiologist from the East West Centre in Hawaii, once characterised HIV in Hong Kong as an epidemic within that group.

The chief executive of Aids Concern Hong Kong, Andrew Chidgey, has argued that a major cause of the rapid growth in HIV infection rates in Hong Kong is the pervasive cultural taboo against homosexuality among Hong Kong Chinese families, leading to men’s unwillingness to disclose either a gay or HIV-positive identity.

Those who fail to declare their gay identity, MSM experiences or HIV carrier status often have difficulty accessing medical and social support. It has been estimated there were over 96,000 men who had sex with men in Hong Kong in 2009, and the number is likely to have increased in the years since then.

With sponsorship from both the University of Warwick in the UK and the University of California, Berkeley, I recently conducted a survey to understand the obstacles faced by the MSM community in Hong Kong when they decide to disclose their sexuality to their families.

I ran the anonymous, online survey for 10 months from June 2018 to March 2019. People of all backgrounds, regardless of nationality, gender, sexual orientation and HIV-status, were welcome to participate. The questionnaire was posted on various local LGBT Facebook groups, including shOwT in HK, Hong Kong speak OUT and HK InterBank. Read more via South China Morning Post