What a Gay Flight Attendant's Lost Discrimination Case Says About LGBTQ Rights in China

Last week, it was made public that a Shenzhen court in March 2022 dismissed a high-profile discrimination lawsuit brought by a gay flight attendant, Chai Cheng, against his former employer, China Southern Airlines, the world’s largest air carrier and a powerful state-owned company. Chai’s case is one of the latest – and most dramatic – chapters in the frustrated struggle of China’s LGBTQ community to obtain legal protection against discrimination.

Chai’s private life was thrust into the national spotlight in October 2019 when a security camera clip of him kissing a male China Southern pilot in his apartment’s elevator was leaked online. The pilot publicly claimed the video depicted Chai sexually harassing him. But soon more security footage and chat logs surfaced indicating that Chai and the pilot were consensually touching as part of an ongoing intimate relationship.

A third person then emerged – the pilot’s same-sex partner – who had threatened Chai, and, while pretending to be the pilot’s wife, blasted messages to China Southern employee chat groups disparaging Chai for having an “improper sexual orientation.”

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