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By Didi Kirsten Tatlow and John Feng
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China Decoded is Newsweek’s in-depth newsletter about China’s growing influence on the world, written by Senior Correspondent for International Affairs and Investigations Didi Kirsten Tatlow and China Editor John Feng. It goes beyond the headlines to examine how Beijing thinks, how its policies travel beyond China’s borders, and what they mean for the United States and its allies. Readers can sign up for China Decoded to receive each edition directly in their inbox.
Here, for Newsweek Members, is the latest edition of China Decoded in full:
Political Prodigy
Joshua Wong Chi-fung was always so young. Still is. Last Thursday, he was sentenced for the fifth time for peaceful political activities.
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The Hong Kong democracy activist now isn’t due to be released until 2036, when he will be 40. But there is no guarantee he will be released then.
The Hong Kong authorities may be trying to keep him in prison for as long as they can. I’m starting to wonder if Joshua will end up in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s longest-serving political prisoner—an achievement I would not wish for anyone.
After all, he was charged last year with a second state security crime while still serving time for a first one. Thursday’s new sentence came two months before he was due to be released. Earlier this year, a Hong Kong court sentenced 78-year-old Jimmy Lai, a newspaper publisher and fellow democrat, to 20 years in prison on political crimes. It was effectively a life sentence.
Here I’d also like to highlight the case of Au Kam San, 69, in Macau, the former Portuguese territory next to Hong Kong. Au was sentenced yesterday to 12 years and six months in prison for “subversion against the political power of the state,” the BBC reported.
But Joshua always was so young. A political prodigy, in fact.
He was 15 in 2011, the year he founded an organization to resist the implementation of the Chinese Communist Party’s “patriotic education” on Hong Kong children. That was 14 years after Hong Kong became part of China after a century and a half of British rule. The organization was called Scholarism
He was 16 in 2012, the year he founded an organization to resist the implementation of the Chinese Communist Party’s “patriotic education” on Hong Kong children. That was 15 years after Hong Kong became part of China after a century and a half of British rule. The organization was called Scholarism.
Joshua’s latest, and so far longest, prison sentence is for “conspiracy to commit collusion with foreign countries or with external elements to endanger national security.”
It is the same charge that was used to sentence Lai last February, as well as “conspiracy to publish seditious materials.” As a newsman in a formerly free society that’s just a job description, really.
Yet on June 30, 2020, everything changed in Hong Kong.
Free speech and peaceful political activity were criminalized by a state security law imposed by Beijing, following massive democracy demonstrations that shook the city.
The most recent bout had been in 2019 when hundreds of thousands of people protested against a proposed law that would have enabled Hong Kongers’ extradition to the mainland of China and into the CCP legal system.
Instead, CCP law came to Hong Kong.
Here’s an image of those 2019 demonstrations, with the city’s streets turned into human rivers of protest:
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An important political science point here. The law that Beijing’s National People’s Congress passed on Hong Kong is called the “Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.” It’s usually referred to as the national security law, or NSL.
Its purpose is to protect the political power of the CCP. That’s why there are so many speech and, well, political, bans in it. That makes it a state security law, not a national security law, since the CCP is China’s political system but not the nation.
This distinction matters as it makes clear that the law is like those in communist states such as East Germany, where its executors, the Stasi, gained notoriety. Stasi is a short form for Staatssicherheit, or state security. I’d like to h/t the Czech think tank Sinopsis for insisting on this point. The Czechs know what they are talking about, having been a Soviet satellite for decades.
Here are two photos of Joshua in 2021, after his first state security charge. He grew up in politics:
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In his Thursday ruling, the Hong Kong judge, William Tam, presented evidence of Joshua’s crimes committed after June 30, 2020—comments made in social media posts and interviews with overseas media, mostly.
For some months after the passage of the state security law, Joshua, who chose to stay in Hong Kong, continued to work with exiled Hong Kongers and overseas politicians to exert political pressure on the Hong Kong government and on Beijing, for example by pushing for sanctions.
The state security law contravenes Hong Kong’s constitution, the Basic Law, which guarantees free speech, publication, and assembly. The Basic Law also guaranteed that a United Nations treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, would remain effective after Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to China from Britain. That is no longer the case.
Joshua pleaded guilty. He did not deny making those social media posts or giving those interviews. Not pleading guilty could have earned him life in prison, the maximum penalty for the crime of which he was found guilty—Article 29 of the state security law.
But perhaps even the Hong Kong court realized that sentencing a 30-year-old to life in prison over Facebook posts is a really bad look.
There weren’t any photos of Joshua in public this time around, just of a prison van that he is believed to have been in. But here are some of his friends after the most recent sentencing:
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October 30 is the International Day of Political Prisoners. It commemorates the Soviet “politicals” Kronid Lyubarsky and Oleksii Murzhenko, who held a one-day hunger strike in a Mordovian prison camp (the Mordovian Republic is southeast of Moscow, about halfway to the city of Kazan).
Freedom House estimates that more than a million people around the world are in prison for political reasons: journalists, human rights defenders, writers, democratic opposition leaders, religious leaders, artists, others. “They are people who spoke, wrote, protested, prayed, created, or simply refused to remain silent in the face of injustice,” the U.S.-based organization said in a joint statement.
It’s not a competition anyone wants to join. But one has to wonder if Joshua Wong will become the world’s longest-serving political prisoner.
Didi Kirsten Tatlow is Senior Correspondent, International Affairs/Investigations at Newsweek. She is based in Berlin, Germany. You can get in touch by email here.
The Data Story
The San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation, a nonprofit analyzing at-risk detainees in China, issued the final update to its political prisoner database this year. It records the names of over 50,000 people who were held or continue to be held in China at the end of 2025.
It’s difficult to track detainees in China’s opaque legal system. Dui Hua says it used mostly open-source materials to collect information on non-violent political dissents, religious practitioners, ethnic minorities, petitioners, foreign nationals and individuals charged under national security or sedition laws in Hong Kong and Macau.
Its records, which are only partial due to the decline in judicial transparency in China, contributed to a database of the same name maintained by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a rule of law-focused U.S. government agency formed in 2000.
Joshua Wong is one of 11,479 individuals in the current CECC database, along with more than 2,600 others who are either detained, under non-custodial detention, or missing—possibly detained.
Wong is CECC record number 2021-00009. The commission says China is violating his civil liberties include freedom of opinion and expression, right of civic participation, and freedom of assembly and association.
“Hong Kong police arrested democracy advocate Joshua Wong Chi-fung at least six times in connection with his activism,” a summary of his records reads.
His first arrest was for unlawful assembly in September 2014 after he and others protested planned electoral reform in Hong Kong. He was ordered to perform 80 hours of community service.
In February 2021, nearly 14 weeks after he was remanded into custody for a public order offence that later carried a 13.5-month sentence, Wong was charged for the first time under China’s national security law for Hong Kong.
He was denied bail and in November 2024 sentenced to four years and eight months for subversion over informal primary elections held among pro-democracy candidates planning to run for the city’s Legislative Council. The group of organizers and candidates later charged by the authorities is known as the “Hong Kong 47.”
His second charge under the national security law came in June 2025 for conspiracy to collude with foreign forces, having previously called for sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials. The sentenced announced on November 5 was for another 10 years.
Wong was 24 at the start of his detention in Hong Kong, and he will be 40 if he serves the full term until late 2036. It’s one of the harshest punishments the city’s High Court has handed down based on the national security law.
Only Beijing critic Jimmy Lai, 78, received a longer sentence of 20 years—announced this past February—which could see him imprisoned for a quarter century until the mid-2040s.
John Feng is Newsweek's China Editor based in Taichung, Taiwan. You can get in touch with John by email here.
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