From inside Hong Kong’s oldest maximum security prison, where he swaps books with Triad gang members and studies law, Joshua Wong writes letters like a man desperate to stay connected to the outside world.
Excerpts from his private prison writings reveal the pro-democracy activist asking friends to take screenshots of social media accounts and put questions to AI chatbots on his behalf.
To one acquaintance, he writes about his prison reading habits. “Some of the old-school triad bosses in here have also lent me books,” he says in the letters to friends, seen exclusively by the Guardian. “They read too. One of them lent me Mario Puzo’s The Godfather (lol).”
The 30-year-old Wong, who rose to prominence as the teenage face of Hong Kong’s now-squashed democracy movement, has been imprisoned since November 2020.
On Thursday, he was sentenced to 10 years for foreign collusion, his second conviction under the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020. Wong pleaded guilty to the charge in September.
Wong is the only pro-democracy activist to be prosecuted twice under the national security legislation. He had been due to be released in January, before the latest prosecution, and will now serve his two sentences concurrently.
Despite spending his 21st, 25th and 30th birthdays in prison, Wong’s letters – written between August and October – show his resolve and continuing concern about Hong Kong’s future.
“The only thing I worry about is that people will forget Hong Kong, and that amid competition and struggles between great powers, they will forget the countless ordinary, unknown people in different places who have paid a price for their beliefs,” he writes.
In Stanley prison, where young inmates use M&Ms as currency, he spends time exercising, learning to play the guitar and teaching English to other prisoners.
“I was teaching English to a Russian,” he says in one letter. “When he asked me what the word ‘totalitarian’ meant, I simply answered, ‘Putin’ (lol)”.
Books appear to be central to his life. His reading list includes Patriot, the memoir of Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who died in prison in 2024; biographies of Steve Jobs, Nelson Mandela, Benjamin Franklin; and the memoir of former Citibank trader turned YouTuber and inequality campaigner, Gary Stevenson.
On the day of the US presidential election in November 2024, he watched votes come in while holding a copy of JD Vance’s bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.
Wong gained international attention during the 2014 Umbrella protests, which paralysed the city’s financial centre and galvanised a generation of young people. In October 2014, he appeared – with his trademark black-rimmed spectacles – on the cover of a Time magazine under the headline: “The Face of Protest”.
When protests erupted in 2019 over a proposed extradition bill, Wong was serving a prison sentence for his role in the 2014 demonstrations. He was released at the height of the protests and immediately took to the streets.
In 2020, Beijing said its introduction of the national security law was needed to restore stability to the former British colony, but critics said it gave authorities sweeping powers to crack down on free speech and dissent.
Since then, activists and journalists have been arrested, independent newsrooms closed, and much of the city’s political opposition forced into exile. There have been more than 400 arrests under national security legislation, according to Hong Kong’s security bureau.
“Joshua’s case is part of an attempt to control how my generation’s political history is remembered,” says Frances Hui, a childhood friend and pro-democracy activist in exile.
“For years, people around the world could hear him argue, organise, and explain what he thought Hong Kong’s future should be. Now we can barely hear from him at all.”
In his letters, Wong says Mandela inspired him to study law and he has enrolled in an undergraduate company law course.
He says that he has lost weight, but has a strict routine of pull-ups, squats and pushups. He also reads the Bible and recites passages from the book of Joshua and the Corinthians.
Wong’s childhood friends and fellow activists say the Hong Kong they once fought for no longer exists.
“It is hard to say whose side time is on,” says another childhood friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Hui says that Hong Kong authorities had waited nearly five years after the alleged crime to prosecute Wong – just before his release.
“By the time he sees freedom, he is most certainly not going to be the young boy we once remembered,” she says.
