Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Thursday, November 5, after pleading guilty to conspiring to collude with foreign forces under the national security law.
The 30-year-old had already served nearly six years in prison and was expected to be released in January 2027 from a separate sentence of four years and eight months for subversion. The new sentence is for a separate national security case; available reports do not establish whether it will run consecutively to his existing term.
Wong pleaded guilty in September. Prosecutors said the case concerned efforts to seek sanctions or other measures against Hong Kong and China between July 1 and November 23, 2020. RTHK reported his guilty plea and outlined the allegations in court.
A second case under the national security law
Authorities charged Wong in June 2025, while he was serving the earlier sentence. His expected release date had been approaching before the new case was brought. The 10-year term announced Thursday is the sentence in this case, not a confirmed calculation of how long he will remain in custody overall.
Wong rose to prominence during Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Movement and later took part in international lobbying for the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which was passed by the United States in 2019. He was also among the pro-democracy figures convicted of subversion in Hong Kong’s largest national security trial in 2024.
The Associated Press reported that the court treated the foreign-collusion offence as serious and imposed a 10-year term after Wong’s guilty plea. The sentencing adds a separate prison term to the punishment he was already serving, though the relationship between the two terms has not been clarified in the reports cited.
Reid Bentley 
Clayton Ward