Losing sex appeal? The future of Hong Kong’s red light districts

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The Old China Hand pub on Lockhart Road in Wan Chai before it shuttered in 2014. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Published: 8:00am, 3 Dec 2016Updated: 2:58pm, 19 Dec 2016

Hong Kong’s red light districts are being reinvented as upmarket, hipster town centres and might not serve as visible trading bases for sex within the next decade, support workers and academics have said.

Combined with the growth of the online sex trade, gentrification of some of the city’s main nightlife bar districts – Wan Chai, Lan Kwai Fong and Tsim Sha Tsui – is being cited as a driving force behind the trend.

Wan Chai, a base for Hong Kong’s sex workers since the early 1900s, was recently thrust into the spotlight during the high-profile double murder trial of British banker Rurik Jutting, jailed for life last month for killing Indonesian women Sumarti Ningsih and Seneng Mujiasih, whom he met in the district’s bars.

Following the shocking details of the trial, commentators predicted Hong Kong’s sex industry would move underground as the government and others sought to burnish the city’s standing as “Asia’s World City” and one of the safest places on earth.

They suggest areas such as Wan Chai, where an estimated 600,000 people visit daily for work or recreation, will eventually start to memorialise its red light district as part of the city’s cultural heritage, taking inspiration from the Dutch capital Amsterdam.

Professor Brian King of Polytechnic University’s school of hotel and tourism management said Wan Chai’s “brashness” would continue to decline as the full effects of gentrification took hold.

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