Joshua Wong is a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist. In 2011, at the age of 14, he co-founded Scholarism, a student activist group that launched a successful campaign against the Beijing-backed Moral and National Education curriculum. In 2016, Wong and now exiled Hong Kong activist, Nathan Law, co-founded the (now disbanded) political party Demosistō, which advocated for peaceful democratic reform. Wong’s commitment to nonviolent advocacy has been recognized worldwide. In 2014, he was named one of TIME’s most influential teens, and in 2018, a group of US lawmakers nominated Wong, among others, for the Nobel Peace Prize. Over more than a decade, Wong has been arrested and detained multiple times for his peaceful activism and for advocating for democratic reform. He has been detained continuously since Nov. 23, 2020, his imprisonment prolonged repeatedly for peacefully protesting, attending a Tiananmen Square Vigil, and participating in the unofficial democratic primaries in 2020. In November 2024, as part of the mass sentencing of the “Hong Kong 47,” he was sentenced to 4 years and 8 months for “conspiracy to commit subversion.” In June 2025, while imprisoned, he was charged again, this time with “colluding with foreign forces,” for lobbying foreign governments in 2020 — conduct that had ended the day his detention began. He pleaded guilty on Sept. 2, 2026, and now faces up to life in prison.