Hong Kong just locked up its most famous activist until he's middle-aged
1 hour ago · 5 November 2026Share
Hong Kong student activist Joshua Wong talks about the Hong Kong situation at the U.S. Capitol. File photo. House Foreign Affairs Committee · Public domain
Hong Kong just gave Joshua Wong another decade in prison.
He's the territory's most visible pro-democracy activist. And he was two months from walking free.
Now he's not out until late 2036.
Judge William Tam handed down the sentence earlier today at Hong Kong's High Court. Joshua Wong, who turned 30 last month, pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security. That's a charge under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law.
Here's the thing. Wong was already in prison.
He was serving four years and eight months for conspiracy to commit subversion. That came out of the Hong Kong 47 case, the biggest national security trial since the law was imposed, built around an unofficial 2020 primary election. He was due out in January 2027.
So what happens to the two sentences? They run partly together. About two months and two days overlap. That means Wong stays in prison for roughly nine more years instead of going home this winter.
Judge Tam said he started at 13 years, then cut it to 10 because Wong pleaded guilty. He called the offence of a grave nature and said the court needed to show the community's rejection of what Wong did.
So what did Wong actually do? Prosecutors say he and Nathan Law, his fellow former student leader, agreed around 2016 to lobby internationally for sanctions on Hong Kong and China. The court called the pair two ring-leaders or masterminds of that plan.
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The Court of Final Appeal Building in Hong Kong. File photo. THE LION ROCK · CC BY-SA 4.0
That lobbying included meetings Wong held with Nancy Pelosi and Marco Rubio, in 2016 and 2019. He also campaigned for the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, a US law that lets Washington sanction people over rights violations in Hong Kong. It passed. The conduct the court charged him over ran from July to November 2020 — the same months Beijing brought in the National Security Law.
Nathan Law isn't in the dock. He left Hong Kong and is still in self-imposed exile in Britain. Hong Kong still wants him.
Wong's lawyer, Derek Chan, asked the court for a sentence that gave Wong some hope. He told the judge Wong wants to care for his parents once he's out. In a letter seen by AFP, Wong wrote he'd hoped to leave prison in 2027, and called his years behind bars his says quote "most profound lessons".
When the sentence was read out, Wong thanked his supporters and waved. Some of them wept. Margaret Chan, 61, a long-time supporter, told AFP she was too heartbroken to speak. Others called out that they'd wait for him.
Steve Li, chief superintendent of the Hong Kong police's National Security Department, welcomed the sentence. He says quote "evidently proved" that Wong's push for foreign sanctions was pointless.
And here's the other side. Human Rights Watch called the sentence cruel and unjust, and is asking foreign governments to sanction the officials it blames for growing repression in Hong Kong. Eric Lai, a research fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Asian Law, said national security charges can be used again and again to keep one political prisoner locked up.
Steve Tsang, who runs the China Institute at SOAS University of London, said the sentence shows Beijing keeping a tight rein over Hong Kong. No sign of any return to how the territory ran before 2019.
Joshua Wong first became known in the 2014 Umbrella Movement, after co-founding the student group Scholarism in 2011, aged 14. Jimmy Lai, who founded the now-closed Apple Daily newspaper, got 20 years under the same law in February this year — still the longest term handed out under it.
It isn't known whether Hong Kong plans more charges against Wong while he's in prison. It also isn't known whether other figures from the Hong Kong 47 case could get similar extra sentences.
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