Opinion | Hong Kong government’s straitjacket on sport and recreation is suffocating entire industries

The HKRU is in a financial bind as its monstrous cash cow, the Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens, was cancelled in 2020 and the 2021 edition has been postponed until November. There is no guarantee that it will be staged then, even with a vaccine now starting to be administered around the world.

Last week, about 50 tennis instructors and players staged a peaceful protest at Tamar Park over courts being shut down and their livelihoods damaged. The Hong Kong Police Department showed up en masse, with more than 100 officers and a loudspeaker to quickly disperse the participants, who took the opportunity to vent their frustrations.

Gym owners, most of whom are still waiting for a second, or even first round of relief from the government, have endured more than 130 days of closure since the pandemic hit, and now can expect at least another few weeks as the government is unlikely to consider relaxing any restrictions until well after the Lunar New Year (February 12-14). The prerequisite is a drop in the number of local cases to single digits, which must be maintained for a “period of time”. But time is in short supply.