The Chinese government’s latest charges against Joshua Wong, who is currently behind bars, could keep him there for the rest of his life. He is now accused of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.”
Hong Kong Free Press reports that Wong “stands accused of conspiring with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and ‘other persons unknown’ between July 1 and November 23, 2020, to request foreign countries, organisations, or individuals based overseas to impose sanctions, blockades or engage in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China, according to the charge sheet seen by HKFP” (June 6, 2025).
Sarah Brooks, China director of Amnesty International, says: “Once again, the vague and sweeping offence of ‘collusion with foreign forces’ is being weaponized to justify an attack on the freedoms of expression and association.”
The charge may be vague, but what the Chinese Communist Party is seeking to punish is not at all vague: opposition to its tyranny.
Scholarism
Prior to his current incarceration, Wong had been arrested and detained repeatedly, but more briefly, for opposing the party-state.
He began his career as an activist in 2011, when 15-year-old Wong and a schoolmate founded the student activist group Scholarism to combat the introduction of a compulsory course in Moral and National Education.
“This was the first time in Hong Kong’s history that secondary-school pupils had become actively involved in politics,” Wong wrote in 2015. “We opposed the new curriculum because it was a blatant attempt at indoctrination: the draft course hailed the Communist Party of China as a ‘progressive, selfless and united organization.’ ”
By 2012, Scholarism was able to organize a rally attended by more than 100,000 Hongkongers.
During a large pro-democracy protest in 2014, Wong was one of 78 arrested. He was detained for a couple of days.
Early in 2015, he was detained for a few hours for alleged incitement and participation in an unlawful assembly.
In 2016, upon arriving in Thailand to give a talk about his experience with the Umbrella Movement of 2014, he was detained by the Thai authorities, apparently in obedience to the Chinese government. After 12 hours in detention, he was deported to Hong Kong.
Demosistō
Also in 2016, Wong helped found a new political party, Demosistō, one goal of which was to promote a referendum to extend Hong Kong’s sovereignty past the projected 2047 expiration of the “one country, two systems” system that had been solemnly guaranteed to last for at least fifty years when Great Britain handed over Hong Kong to China in 1997.
Although only 19 at the time, Wong tried to stand as a candidate in the 2016 Legislative Council election. Unsuccessfully: Hong Kong’s election law requires candidates to be at least 21.
In 2017, he was jailed on a charge of unlawful assembly, along with two other student activists, Nathan Law and Alex Chow, on similar charges.
In two separate stints in 2018 and 2019, Wong spent time in prison on charges related to his participation in the protests of 2014. When he was released in June 2019, the mass protests of that year were in full swing.
Also in 2019, he and other Hong Kong activists testified in Congress, urging passage of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, legislation sponsored by the current U.S. secretary of state.
In 2020, Wong was again charged with “unlawful assembly” because of his participation in a 2019 protest.
In 2024, he was sentenced to four years and eight months for “subversion.”
Won’t bow down
Now, in 2025, the Chinese government is intimating that it will keep Wong in prison well past the end of his current sentence.
Officials may fear that once out of the prison that holds him now, he will find a way to escape the larger prison that Hong Kong has become and continue his opposition overseas.
As soon as he had been released from prison in June 2019, Joshua Wong instructed the top Hong Kong official at the time, Carrie Lam, to resign and to leave the protesters alone.
“We demand Carrie Lam step down, retract the extradition bill, and withdraw the labeling of ‘riot.’ Stop arresting and charging protesters. Otherwise Hong Kong people will fight back more. Hong Kong people will not bow down to the authoritarian regime.”
