Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Activist Joshua Wong Pleads Guilty to Collusion

BREAKING: Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong pleads guilty to collusion with foreign forces, accused of urging Western politicians including Nancy Pelosi and Marco Rubio to impose sanctions on the city.

Joshua Wong has pleaded guilty to collusion with foreign forces in Hong Kong.

He's the face of the city's pro-democracy movement, the student who stared down Beijing as a teenager and made the cover of Time. Now he's in a courtroom admitting to a national security charge.

The accusation is that he urged Western politicians to sanction Hong Kong, and prosecutors named names. Nancy Pelosi on one side of the aisle, Marco Rubio on the other. In Beijing's telling, asking foreign lawmakers for help is the crime itself.

Wong is already behind bars from earlier convictions, and collusion under the national security law can carry a sentence measured in decades, up to life. He turns thirty this year. He has spent most of his adult life either protesting or imprisoned, and after this plea, the second half of that sentence is the one that defines him.

This is Angel Manalo, reporting for HIT.