China Power | Society | East Asia

Transnational Repression of Hong Kongers in the UK Is Disturbingly Common

New survey data from Hong Kong Watch helps quantify the scale of the problem – including among Hong Kongers not engaged in public activism.

On May 7, two British-Chinese dual nationals were convicted at the Old Bailey in London on espionage charges. Peter Wai and Bill Yuen were found guilty of running a “shadow policing” operation against Hong Kong dissidents from within Yuen’s workplace, the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO). Using Wai’s contacts and access to sensitive information from his role as an immigration official within the U.K. Home Office, the pair surveilled pro-democracy Hong Konger activists and attempted to launch an operation to illegally seize and return  to China a woman suspected of fraud, in the style of China’s Operation Fox Hunt.  

For the United Kingdom’s small coterie of exiled pro-democracy Hong Konger activists, the successful prosecution serves as vindication of their concerns about the transnational reach of the Hong Kong government. Since 2022, Hong Kong authorities have sought to pursue exiled activists with the aim of either silencing them or “persuading” them to return to face prosecution in Hong Kong. It has imposed US$130,000 (HK$1 million) bounties on 19 activists living in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia, and US$25,500 (HK$200,000) bounties on 15 more individuals. The youngest of these, Chloe Cheung, was aged 19 at the time the bounty was issued. 

Bountied activists have found themselves subject to violence and harassment. In a series of particularly concerning incidents, “wanted” posters and sexualized fake images were distributed around the neighborhoods of bountied pro-democracy activists Carmen Lau and Tony Chung in the U.K., and ex-LegCo politician Ted Hui in Australia. 

If the aim of such actions was to silence their critics, the Hong Kong government and its supporters have scored a massive own goal. The issuance of bounties, “wanted” posters and sexualized deepfakes have attracted much attention from journalists and politicians, turning young female activists like Chloe Cheung and Carmen Lau into the media-friendly face of the overseas Hong Kong democracy movement. They have courageously spoken out about their experiences in media interviews and oral evidence sessions of the U.K. Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights’ inquiry into transnational repression in the U.K. Hong Kong has gained a reputation as a leading progenitor of transnational repression.

However, the media and political attention on the individual experiences of high-profile activists has perhaps belied the true extent and scale of transnational repression experienced by the U.K.’s Hong Kong diaspora. Since 2021 more than 180,000 Hong Kongers have moved to the United Kingdom via the British National (Overseas) (BNO) humanitarian visa program, launched by the Boris Johnson government. The total BNO diaspora in the U.K. is estimated at over 200,000 people. Survey research has shown that the average BNO visa holder is in early middle age, married with children, and living in some of the leafier suburbs of London, Birmingham, and Manchester. Their lives are quite different to those of younger activists and professional human rights defenders openly targeted by the Hong Kong government. It would be reasonable to assume that transnational repression does not feature highly as a concern for the broader diaspora. 

To test this assumption, this March Hong Kong Watch launched a survey of Hong Kongers in the U.K. to assess the level of political engagement and the experience of transnational repression across the diaspora at large. We were interested in finding out if, and how, transnational repression affected ordinary Hong Kongers without a public profile for their activism, and how politically engaged........

© The Diplomat