Jailed Hong Kong opposition activist Joshua Wong Chi-fung has been sentenced to 10 years behind bars for his role in a global campaign to instigate sanctions against mainland China and the city in the aftermath of the 2019 anti-government protests.

The High Court ruled on Thursday that Wong and fugitive ex-lawmaker Nathan Law Kwun-chung had partly contributed to the imposition of sanctions and adverse measures against mainland and Hong Kong officials which significantly undermined national security.

The 30-year-old, who earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to collude with foreign forces, had been scheduled to complete a sentence of four years and eight months for conspiracy to commit subversion on January 7 next year.

The court ordered two months and two days, representing the remaining time Wong is to serve his sentence in the previous national security case, to run concurrently with his latest jail term, meaning the activist’s expected release date is pushed back to November 2036.

Mr Justice William Tam Yiu-ho ruled that the present offence was serious enough to warrant at least 10 years’ imprisonment under a two-tier sentencing regime provided for the crime under the national security law.

He described Wong and Law as “advocates at the forefront colluding with foreign forces”. They and their associates had exploited their connections with top overseas officials and institutions to promote foreign interference at a time when Hong Kong was facing “very high risks to national security and the rule of law” following the 2019 unrest.

“At such a critical time, the joint enterprise by the defendant [and Law] and their affiliates to collude with foreign forces or elements and make blatant calls for sanctions and hostile measures certainly aggravated the serious predicament and difficulties that [Beijing and the Hong Kong government] had then to deal with,” the judge said.

Tam, who was handpicked by the chief executive to oversee national security proceedings, said Wong had persisted in his pursuit of an “international battlefront” after collusion with foreign forces became a crime, as the activist had provided “underground assistance” to his accomplices overseas by bolstering their calls for sanctions in the media.

The judge cut three years from a starting point of 13 years’ imprisonment, noting that the usual one-third discount for a defendant who pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity was not available to Wong due to the national security law’s minimum sentence requirement.

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu described Wong as one of the “primary culprits responsible for undermining Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability”.

“Wong Chi-fung, Law Kwun-chung and others persistently colluded with foreign countries or external elements, actively lobbied the United States to pass so-called legislation concerning Hong Kong, and openly solicited foreign countries to impose sanctions against China and Hong Kong,” Lee said in a statement.

“Such acts constituted extremely serious offences, which not only severely undermined national sovereignty, security and development interests, but also directly prejudiced the well-being of the public and the stability of society.”

A government spokesman also rejected Western criticism, saying Wong’s guilty plea reflected the strength of the evidence, and the detailed reasons for his sentence showed he had received a fair and open trial under the rule of law.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun described Wong’s offences as serious and stressed that Hong Kong upheld the principle that anyone who broke the law should be prosecuted.

He reiterated Beijing’s support for the city’s efforts to safeguard national security and urged foreign countries to stop interfering in China’s internal affairs and Hong Kong’s judiciary, and to respect the city’s rule of law.

Chief Superintendent Steve Li Kwai-wah of the police’s National Security Department described the sentence as appropriate, but said the force would nevertheless discuss with the Department of Justice whether to appeal for a heavier sentence.

Li criticised Wong for committing a raft of offences over his years of political activism.

“I sincerely hope that for the rest of his time in prison, apart from reflecting on the wrongdoings he has done to the country and to Hong Kong, he must seize the opportunity to learn to respect the law and properly understand his own country,” he said.

The chief superintendent also urged Law to return to Hong Kong and surrender himself.

Asked about the 2017 documentary Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower, which remains available on Netflix, Li said police were concerned about whether it contained seditious content but declined to comment further.

The Security Bureau previously said it was following up on the matter and would handle it in accordance with the law.

The European Union deplored what it called the “politically motivated sentencing” of Wong to “an exceptionally long prison term” and called for his immediate release. It said the case demonstrated a “deterioration of the state of the rule of law” in the city and further weighed on Hong Kong’s international reputation.

The United States’ Congressional-Executive Commission on China called for Wong’s unconditional release in a social media post, saying he had been sentenced for “peacefully defending freedoms” and that the case showed Hong Kong’s courts were being weaponised as a tool of repression.

Wong pleaded guilty in early September to conspiring with the 33-year-old Law and others to garner international support for a resistance campaign aimed at forcing Beijing to repeal the national security law and grant Hongkongers greater political freedom.

A vocal critic of Beijing, Wong rose to prominence in 2014 as a student leader during that year’s Occupy protests, a civil disobedience movement calling for democratic reform in Hong Kong.

He co-founded the political group Demosisto two years later, which initially called for a referendum to determine Hong Kong’s sovereignty, before abandoning that stance in early 2020. The party was disbanded hours before the implementation of the national security law at the end of June that year.

The court heard Wong visited the United States in November 2016 and September 2019 to drum up support for a bill that would allow the country’s president to punish Hong Kong and mainland officials for suppressing basic freedoms in the city. The bill, called the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, was signed into law in November 2019.

Wong and Law – who served as Demosisto’s secretary general and founding chairman, respectively – also urged Western governments to stop exporting weapons and crowd control equipment to Hong Kong during the 2019 unrest.

They further called on the West to include Hong Kong human rights provisions in trade deals with Beijing and to end the special status previously accorded to the city as a separate customs territory.

Wong continued to advocate for sanctions against China in the media even after the national security law came into effect, the court heard.

The activist urged private enterprises to avoid investing in the mainland and petitioned Israel-based forensic company Cellebrite to stop providing phone-hacking technology to Hong Kong’s police and related security agencies.

In a “presentencing work report” published on November 22, 2020, Wong revealed that he had also written to electronics giants Sony and Apple to warn them against business ties with Beijing. — SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST