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Nathan Law is a pro-democracy activist from Hong Kong. He was one of the student leaders of the 2014 Umbrella Movement and co-founder of Demosisto, a now-disbanded political party. In 2016, at the age of 23, he became the youngest ever person to be elected to Hong Kong’s legislature, but was disqualified nine months later after a court invalidated his oath following an intervention from the National People’s Congress Standing Committee. In June 2020, he fled Hong Kong on the eve of the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law, and he is wanted by the police. He now resides in the U.K., where he has sought asylum. What follows is a lightly edited Q&A.

Q: Your entry into activism began through the student union at your college, Lingnan University. But you wrote in Freedom: How We Lose It and How We Fight Back that your political awakening actually came earlier than that. Could you talk about that experience and how it got you involved in local politics?

A: My political enlightenment began with attending the candlelight vigil for the June fourth massacre,¹Between 1990 and 2019, Hong Kong held an annual candlelight vigil regularly attended by hundreds of thousands to commemorate the Tiananmen Massacre. Since 2020, the vigil has been banned, and organizers and prominent activists have been jailed for attempting to participate. and also thanks to an incident in my high school. At the time I was really apolitical and the school principal was strongly pro-Beijing. One morning assembly, the day after Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize, she publicly criticized him, and that triggered my curiosity, because at the time I only knew that Nobel laureates were people who were excellent in their field. So how come this Chinese person was being criticized? It opened the door to me looking up what Liu Xiaobo did and his work, and the concept of democracy. So I decided that in university I wanted to get involved in activism, and that’s why I ran for the head of our student union when I was a freshman, and that brought me to the Umbrella Movement.

In Freedom, you wrote about your involvement in a student organization in secondary school that you later realized was a United Front group designed to identify and feed talented students into pro-Beijing political parties and public office. You reflect in your book that had you been picked, as you describe, to “go onto bigger things,” you might’ve even gone along. Could you say more about that?

This took place in my early or middle secondary school years, even before Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize. I was really apolitical; I didn’t know much about political movements and social affairs, and I got involved in a student organization that, on its surface, said it helped organize recreational activities, bringing students from different secondary schools together for extracurricular activities. For students like me who didn’t have many resources, participating in these events would give you opportunities to organize things, to have fun, and things like that. And I didn’t really realize it was actually an organization that we call “灰線組織 [灰线组织]” — gray line organizations — that were not outright pro-Beijing on the surface, but actually, underneath worked towards certain goals for Beijing. Not until very late did I realize that the patrons and head of these organizations were DAB people²The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, or DAB, is the largest pro-Beijing political party in the city. or Beijing people, and they would secretly contact different individuals at a very young age, asking whether they wanted to work for them, sometimes doing things that were not political at the beginning. But gradually you grow into it, and bit by bit you realize that you’re stepping into their circle, and you’re actually maybe helping the Communist Party, and your political ideology and worldview has been shaped by them. These events are well documented: how the CCP uses United Front activities through camouflage organizations to recruit people. 

In my case there, they were recruiting young people, secondary school students, that had potential and could work for them. I met a friend who was from another school through that organization, and we eventually went down very different paths. 

What kinds of things would they say or do to encourage you to become more pro-Beijing?

For example, they offered really cheap China tours. I was in Beijing or Shanghai for a few hundred bucks. Some big donors donated a million to the whole trip so we got huge savings on our fees. Just try to imagine for a student with nothing, when there’s no way for your parents to afford for you to travel, these trips were actually fascinating. They would have activities for you to have fun and go sightseeing, but they also arranged classes for you to learn Chinese Communist Party orthodoxy. There were some students who didn’t really pay attention, but some did. In these activities they’d tell you how grateful you should be and what opportunities you could have when you work with them. So they’re really good at compounding these small attractions to make you feel like they’re a group of good people that can help you. But actually, they of course have different agendas. 

In 2016, two years after the Umbrella Movement, you were elected to the Legislative Council at the age of 23, the youngest person ever to do so. It’s well known that you were subsequently disqualified, but I want to ask you about your short time working as a lawmaker in the system. What did you learn from your nine months as a legislator?

Well, by the time I entered parliament, the room for resistance was already really limited. For me, I didn’t feel like I was working inside the system, because the legislature had always been a place where pan-democrats could speak up, though they never had the power to change anything. I saw it as a platform to campaign for my beliefs and to make my opposition voice heard loudly. It was actually quite fun. I had my office, and it was filled with young faces. There was a time when the average age of my office was even younger than I was. So I believe we had the youngest legislator and the youngest office. We were a group of people from the student movement, with similar mindsets, and we were really hard working in expanding our local support and working on policy areas that we were interested in. We had a rescue program for stray cats, and we tried a lot of things to expand the possibilities of a legislators’ office. 

As an activist, the group you need to talk to are protesters, core people with similar mindsets. But as a legislator, I learned that with a constituency composed of hundreds of thousands of voters, you’re talking to a much larger group of people whose concerns are very different from protesters. There’s a lot of tedious, patient work in order to enact change or get along. So, I think that experience of talking to a much larger audience was quite a rewarding process. 

In 2016, you ran for office as a candidate for Demosisto, the political party that you co-founded with fellow activists Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow. A controversial part of Demosisto’s platform was its call for “democratic self-determination.” In January 2020, Demosisto dropped the term from the manifesto after a number of candidates were disqualified from running in district elections. Demosisto ultimately disbanded the day before the enactment of the National Security Law. Your critics have often said that self-determination is a veiled call for independence, which your party repeatedly denied. What does “self-determination” mean to you? And now that Demosisto has folded, do you still believe in it?

I personally have always believed in self-determination. I believe that the right to self-determination for Hong Kong people has been long deprived, through a sophisticated plan from the Chinese Communist Party. Last century, Hong Kong was a colony, and people who are free from colonialism should have the right to self-determination, to determine their own future. For me that position applies all the way. 

Some may say that’s a veiled call for independence. But I think it’s important for us to see it as a right first and foremost. For example, if I respect your right to free speech, it doesn’t mean that I must agree with what you’re saying. As the famous saying goes, I may not agree with what you’re saying but I will defend to the death your right to say it. I think that applies in this case: it is our right to choose, no matter the result. 

I think Hong Kong people deserve the right to make a decision, whether for independence or for ‘one country, two systems’… I don’t think supporting the right to self-determination equates to supporting either stance. 

I think Hong Kong people deserve the right to make a decision, whether for independence or for ‘one country, two systems.’ It is, at the end of the day, the decision of Hong Kong people. Sometimes democracy is about the process instead of guaranteeing everyone an outcome they will be happy about. I don’t think supporting the right to self-determination equates to supporting either stance. 

So you see the right to self-determination as the right for Hong Kong people to choose whether they want one country, two systems or independence?

I think at least their views should be taken into account, whatever the socioeconomic or political arrangement. At the end of the day it is Hong Kong people living on that piece of land. They are the people who emerged from colonialism and should enjoy the right to self-determination.

I thought it was notable that in your book you frequently drew links between your experience as an activist in Hong Kong to other forms of activism and dissent in mainland China. In the Hong Kong Charter that was established earlier this year by you and a number of other activists in exile, there’s also a significant section dedicated to talking about mainland Chinese issues. Do you think that solidarity between Hong Kong activists and mainland Chinese activists is possible? And is solidarity made harder by the existence of the pro-independence movement in Hong Kong?

I think solidarity has always been difficult. It is possible for us to support each other, but when it comes to that connection and coordinated actions, there are large barriers in the way that may create more danger for them than for us. So I think the potential for putting them in danger has always been a big barrier to us extending our solidarity. 

And I think people supporting independence is fine. It’s their political belief. I don’t think that strategic concerns should outweigh the freedom of any individual to have their own beliefs. If they calculate that, oh, we may lose some solidarity with activists on the mainland with nationalistic mindsets, they may determine it’s worth it. So I don’t think that [solidarity with mainland activists] is a reason why we should consider whether to support independence or not. There should be much more fundamental reasons we should consider in terms of supporting that notion. 

So, basically, you think it isn’t right to rule out independence just because of concerns about what people in mainland China might think?

Well, I would say that there are people that do take into account what Chinese people might think and still stand by their position. And I think that’s fine. In a free society they should have the right to assess and to calculate the risk of advocacy by themselves. 

It’s been more than two years now since the beginning of the protests, which were largely leaderless, but nonetheless featured the participation of many well-known pro-democracy activists such as yourself. Do you have any regrets about how it played out?

First of all, we have to understand the nature of the movement, which was completely leaderless. It was formless. It was the most flat in terms of power structure and most inclined to direct democracy in terms of how people could participate. So I think it’s not about whether I have any regrets. I think I did my best to help the movement by being present in the first few months, and then by doing international advocacy work. 

And I do think that maybe when you look back, you could find problems and you could be picky. You could say that that’s wrong and that’s not wrong, but that’s just how social movements are. There isn’t a god-like person who can play chess and move things around and then do all the things by their own design. It’s organic and people react, not just by calculation, but by impulse and fear. So I think, certainly, a lot of people say there was too much violence, too many conflicts, that some of the incidents should not have happened. But if we consider the fact that the police were not held accountable at all — some of them were even promoted — when the violence that protesters were facing was often deadly, [the protestors] could have strong reactions given their lives were being threatened on a daily basis. So I think we need to stand in their position and think about why they reacted in that way. 

I think the best thing to do isn’t to condemn [the protestors], but to hold the government accountable. Many people say that protestors should not use violence. But they’re ignoring that the way to address the problem is for the government to be held accountable. That’s not solving the problem, that’s just shifting blame. I don’t think that’s how people who support the movement and the protestors’ demands should behave.

During the protests in 2019, many protestors embraced the concept of laam caau [攬炒/揽炒], a ‘scorched earth’ strategy that believed that if Beijing crushed the pro-democracy movement, activists could pressure the international community to hurt the establishment as well, by suspending Hong Kong’s special trade status, enacting sanctions, etc. But since the enactment of the National Security Law, it’s clear that the pro-democracy movement has been hurt far more than the establishment. Do you think laam caau failed? And was the movement naive to assume it would work?

First of all, I don’t think it was the [2019 protests] that intentionally brought us to this place. They were a reaction towards Beijing’s intimidation. No matter whether you believe in laam caau or not, Beijing will suppress you. Laam caau, at the end of the day, was a deterrence strategy. It believed that “if you do this, we’ll try to do something to make you suffer.” I don’t think that there was an opportunity in Hong Kong for protestors to proactively engage — they were always a reactive side. 

So I think, indeed, we [the pro-democracy movement] are facing lots of difficulty around the world. When they are going after people, it’s really difficult for us to resist and to impose equivalent pressure back on them. But from another perspective, the Hong Kong protests exposed China to the world. Just look at how much has changed in terms of China policy in the last two years. I think the Hong Kong protests definitely play a big role in shaping the narrative and crafting sentiment about China in [foreign] countries, and in ensuring that changes in China policy have people’s support. 

I think, in a way, we brought this change in mindset forward. We were trying to create a deterrent effect, which clearly didn’t work, as they still rolled over us. But the [2019 protests] created more impact [for China] than just sitting there and doing nothing.

But it does highlight the fact that this deterrence strategy failed, right? It seems to suggest that sanctions, suspending Hong Kong’s trade status, economic damage, etc. doesn’t deter Beijing from doing what it wants. So do you think the West should be doing something different to deter Beijing’s aggression?

I think it’s just a matter of degree. For example, the way that the world is diversifying its economies, decreasing reliance on China, blocking its access to sensitive industries… I think this is the beginning for a lot of change, and there’s a lot of potential for the world to grow in terms of equipping themselves to counter the threat of the Chinese Communist regime. At the end of the day, sentiment on China has changed so much in just two or three years. When I landed in the U.K. last June, Boris Johnson was still talking about adding Huawei into the U.K.’s 5G infrastructure. Now there are literally no politicians in the U.K. saying that China is a force of good and we should work with them, that we’re still in the golden era. Now everyone is discussing excluding China from nuclear power plants and preventing them from accessing more of our sensitive industries. So I think the change is definitely there. For now we don’t have enough mechanisms for holding China accountable, and that’s why we need democratic countries to work closer together to coordinate actions towards achieving that. 

Going back to the early days of the anti-extradition law movement in the spring of 2019, a month before the protests kicked off in June, you testified in front of the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China alongside fellow pro-democracy heavyweight Martin Lee and others, warning about the implications of the bill. At the time, support for the extradition law was mixed, even among pro-establishment lawmakers in Hong Kong, with some pro-business lawmakers even opposed. Some people have suggested that it was actually your appearance before Congress that forced Beijing to double down on ramming the bill through in Hong Kong, for fear of losing face. Given that, do you think that international advocacy was the right move?

I think this is just classic victim blaming and stigmatizing tactics from the pro-Beijing side. It was obvious to all of society that [Hong Kong Chief Executive] Carrie Lam was determined to push forward that bill. Even though there were worries and concerns from the business sector, they wouldn’t change much if Beijing was going to hold the line. I think the way that we conducted our international advocacy work was to say that it is important for Hong Kong, as an international financial hub, to attract foreign investment and make foreign governments comfortable with sending companies to [Hong Kong]. Other states should be involved in the discussion, because these policies will affect them. You can’t say that Hong Kong is an open society, a society that attracts international business, and then disallow other governments from commenting on what you’re doing.

I think the taboo about talking to foreign governments had always been there, but we thought it was really important to inform [Congress] and try to put pressure on Beijing, to show that these policies are actually doing more harm than good. 

But politics and legality aside, some would argue that it’s simply not right for a citizen of one country to turn to a foreign country for help on issues of domestic affairs. How would you respond to that?

I think that just mixes up a bunch of concepts. For example, if an American citizen said their current administration was no good, so they should punish [the government] by calling for businesses to not engage with [the government], or do other things to damage support for the government within society — is that a bad thing to do? Not necessarily. If the government is implementing a policy that is wrong, and there are demands from the people that they should be held accountable — for example, committing genocide against their own people — is it wrong to call for support from the international community? Definitely not. 

I think the idea that because you’re a citizen of one country you shouldn’t criticize them, that you shouldn’t call on other countries to hold them accountable… in a way it’s very traditionally Chinese. It’s a kind of yuzhong [愚忠] — foolish loyalty — way of thinking. I think people have the right to resist, and the right to talk about their problems, and to ask for checks and balances and accountability. That’s just what we are asking for. 

Since the passing of the National Security Law, we’ve seen Hong Kong’s courts use the words of international advocates as justification for detaining people accused of national security crimes. For example, in mid-November an Apple Daily executive was denied bail in part because of public comments made by ex-U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab condemning his arrest, despite the fact the executive did not ask Raab to speak out. Do you think international advocacy now is even useful, or is it doing more harm than good? 

Well, in general, it’s definitely useful. It helped craft policies that could possibly help hold China accountable, but they are also vagaries and nuances that we have to be aware of, for example, naming and supporting people who are in dangerous situations. Whether that helps them or not — there’s always debate about that in human rights circles. 

But putting aside all of that, I think trying to find patterns or reasoning in the national security law is just futile. There are no benchmarks for anything, not even sentencing guidelines. No one knows why the previous case was sentenced to five years and nine months.³In mid-November, a court sentenced an activist to five years and nine months in prison for shouting pro-independence slogans at a series of protests, the second person to be convicted on national security charges. There are just no clues in the verdict. It’s completely rule-by-judge, and the judges are appointed by Beijing. So I think trying to find reasoning in the national security law is futile. You’re not going to find reasoning. What you’ll find is a system predetermined and engineered to prosecute people, trying to find justification after-the-fact to make it seem reasonable. But we all know that the outcome has already been decided.

You and your colleagues like Joshua Wong were strong advocates for imposing targeted sanctions on Hong Kong officials. Since the Trump administration, an unprecedented number of officials in Hong Kong and mainland China have been targeted by U.S. sanctions, and other U.S. allies have also joined in. But many of the officials who were sanctioned in Hong Kong and mainland China were subsequently promoted to higher positions. Some would say the sanctions have arguably become an accolade of sorts for their targets. Do you still think the sanctions have been effective? Have your views changed?

They can definitely be effective. Like Carrie Lam is paid in cash, right? It’s obvious that these people who were sanctioned are also losing credibility on the international level. Nobody sees the Hong Kong government as a credible actor, and it’s not being welcomed by other countries for visits. We can definitely see its impact is there — via the naming strategy and also trying to block them from having free access to the Western financial system.

I believe that we need more [sanctions]… When it comes to authoritarian regimes, the government intentionally protects their own. Sanctioning is the only mechanism that we can use to hold these people accountable.

I believe that we need more [sanctions]. We need continued action. For example, there are officials with properties in the U.K., and we should definitely sanction them and freeze those assets. When it comes to authoritarian regimes, the government intentionally protects their own. Sanctioning is the only mechanism that we can use to hold these people accountable. The system rewards them. There is no space for civil society to punish them. The only way is to sanction them and freeze their assets, and cut their ties to Western countries. That’s my take on this.

What do you think the end goal of sanctions should be? Is it simply to make the targets’ lives difficult? Or is it something more politically-oriented, like trying to prevent them from gaining higher office? 

I think sanctioning should be more regular, and include more people, because at the end of the day, it should act as a deterrent to block people from entering into that circle and actively helping [incumbent regimes]. Punishing people, preventing them from travelling to certain countries, or having their assets frozen, that would be good, but at the end of the day we have to create deterrent effects that force people to rethink whether they want to help authoritarian regimes. There should be more risk and potential side effects that they need to face. 

Sure, the goal may be to get officials to rethink whether they want to continue to participate in the system. But from another perspective, sanctions could cause potential targets to resent the people calling for the sanctioning, and harden their position and maybe make them even more pro-establishment. Do you see that as a problem? How do you respond to critics who think that the sanctions actually drive resentment and backlash against the pro-democracy movement? 

I think first of all, sanctions must match certain benchmarks. We’re not just imposing them out of thin air. If they have committed human rights violations, if they have done certain things up to a threshold, then they should be punished. Of course, this impacts how likely sanctions would deter people from actively helping the regime. But it also has an impact in terms of validating what is right and what is wrong. If you are actively helping the regime and you get punished for it, you can be upset, you can double down, but that’s not a reason to not impose sanctions. We can always bring up examples of resistance worsening oppression, but it’s a victim-blaming logic. I just don’t think we should view problems in this way. We should always hold powerful people accountable, instead of blaming the people with no power. 

You left Hong Kong for the U.K. a few days before the enactment of the National Security Law, and later applied for asylum. Over the years, many notable Chinese dissidents have been exiled, but some have struggled to keep their cause and themselves relevant once abroad. How can you keep the Hong Kong cause — and yourself — relevant over time? Do you worry about the international community losing interest in Hong Kong issues?

In terms of the Hong Kong cause, it is getting more challenging because of the declining amount of news about Hong Kong, and people feel like the protests were a few years ago, and they’re no longer happening, etc. So I think it’s really important for us to find ways to try to relate to them. For example, I’ve done a lot of talks trying to relate my personal story to the audience, also by writing a book. Also, trying to make Hong Kong into an example of the rise of authoritarianism and the global democratic recession. People might not really care about Hong Kong, but they definitely care about China, and they definitely care about the world. How we give Hong Kong’s story a spot when you think of China, when you think of the world — I think that’s one way that we can try to make it relevant. 

In terms of myself, I never really saw things in that way. My aim is to try to make myself useful in the movement. And if I’m not useful, then people have all the right to turn to others who are more useful, to move on and stop paying attention to me. I just feel like it’s very natural. I don’t intend to keep my so-called influence for the sake of it, for the sake of becoming famous. This is just me trying to do everything I can to make Hong Kong relevant and to make our voice heard.

Tens of thousands of Hong Kong people have now immigrated to the U.K., and it seems like many more are planning to do so. So far Hong Kongers seem to have been welcomed and benefited from a lot of good will. But have you seen evidence of that changing? Do you worry about backlash towards Hong Kong immigrants?

I think we’re still in an early stage of Hong Kong people entering into British society, but these are valid concerns that the Hong Kong community has to think about, as well as what we can do to be more visible in the community, be more engaged with others, try to integrate culturally, meet with our political representatives, and understand how we can be a force for good. I think the Hong Kong community actually has that awareness, and they’re trying to do things to mitigate the threat. So I think this is something that we as a community will overcome. And I believe that Hong Kong people in the long run would definitely be a visible force for good, and we’ll try to contribute back to the country that offered us a safe place to live. 

It seems that every week brings more news of arrests or a fresh crackdown in Hong Kong. Many of your friends and colleagues, including almost every single prominent member of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, are now in prison or in exile. Perhaps this is an impossible question, but what gives you hope? 

As an activist, the first thing is that hope is a kind of faith. You just have to believe that people have the innate pursuit for freedom, for democracy, and that the arc of history [chuckles] bends towards justice, even if it takes a long time to get there. It’s a matter of faith. It is not something logical.

But there is another hope that I have, in people. You can see in Hong Kong that even though most of the democratic campaigners are jailed, and the political landscape has narrowed to do anything, there are still people doing things like attending court hearings, writing letters, trying to do something in this narrow space. I think hope lies in them. When we watch the news we find a lot of misery, but sometimes you can also find good things. At least you know that there are people with you. Those people are the hope of Hong Kong.

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