In this world, winners become kings and losers outlaws. No parents, anywhere, want to see their children end up behind bars.
A video circulating on social media — timed to the June 4th anniversary — shows footage from the 2014 Occupy Central movement. In it, a girl of six or seven sings the revolutionary anthem Who Has Not Yet Awakened in a sweet, childlike voice. Forty years ago, that might have been moving. Forty years on, all it inspires is dread — a gut-level warning: watch out, don't get played.
Feeding a child with political singing. What does early political exposure do to a young mind?
That video calls two recent news stories to mind.
Law Student Convicted of Riot on Retrial
A first-year law student at a British university returned to Hong Kong in 2019 and joined a riot in Wan Chai on August 30. She was acquitted of riot charges in 2021. The Department of Justice appealed successfully, and the Court of Appeal overturned the acquittal and ordered a retrial before the original magistrate. On June 9, Judge Lee Chun-man convicted Tang Ka-yan — who was 21 at the time of the offense — of riot.
Tang had argued there was no direct evidence of her participation — that she had simply been passing by. Judge Lee disagreed. He considered the location where she was stopped, along with her attire and equipment: black top, black trousers, gas mask, umbrella, and hiking pole. The cumulative weight of the circumstantial evidence, as the Court of Appeal had found, was overwhelming. It ruled out any possibility she was an innocent bystander. She was convicted of riot.
Now 28, Tang wept in the dock after the verdict. Her mother broke down in tears. Given the charge is riot, a substantial sentence is expected.
A law student committing a riot is knowing breach of the law. Her legal education abroad evidently taught her nothing about respecting it.
Construction Worker Convicted of Sedition
A construction worker committed a series of seditious acts between 2024 and 2025. On October 2, 2024 — the day after National Day — he wrote seditious messages on pieces of paper and threw them from the window of his flat in On Tat Estate, Kwun Tong. On December 5, 2025, two days before the Legislative Council election, he threw another batch of seditious leaflets from the same flat. Police arrested him on April 21 this year.
Under caution, the defendant admitted throwing the papers. He stated he had done so to express his discontent with the SAR government, including calls for the public to boycott the vote. He also said he harbored resentment toward Mainland residents, blaming them for taking jobs from local workers — which was why he had written phrases such as "Kill mainlanders" on the papers.
In mitigation, the defense noted that the defendant had a low level of education and had worked in construction throughout his life. The events of 2019 and the pandemic hit him hard — his work shifted from full-time to casual, and his income dropped sharply. Those grievances, the defense argued, led to the offending.
Chief Magistrate So Wai-tak was unsparing. He found the defendant had acted with premeditation — deliberately choosing significant dates to throw targeted messages from his flat. The sentence: 10 months' imprisonment.
Some may feel 10 months for throwing a few pieces of paper is steep. But consider the defendant's record: 23 prior criminal convictions spanning dishonesty, violence, drugs, and public order offenses — including illegal protests — with a previous sentence of four years. He is a serial offender, and the court treated him accordingly.
No Escaping the Consequences
The two cases, taken together, send a clear message. Whether a female university student or a male construction worker, using unlawful means to protest or riot ultimately triggers legal consequences. If only they had thought twice before acting.
For those with deeply entrenched anti-government views, asking them to be patriotic — or even supportive of the government — is, of course, expecting the impossible. But rational adults must understand this: if you choose to confront the government through extreme and unlawful means, you must be prepared to pay the price. The mitigation pleas in both cases suggest that neither defendant had truly reckoned with the possibility of arrest and imprisonment.
Most parents dream of their children achieving great things. Few could imagine them ending up as convicts. For those who filmed their young children speaking out against the SAR government — did they ever stop to think? Such actions plant anti-government ideas in those children's minds from an early age. Those ideas can one day lead them to break the law and face the consequences. Did those parents consider that such footage could lead other people's children astray — pushing them toward failed attempts at subversion, a life on the wrong side of the law, and a ruined future?
If you want to ruin yourself, that is your business. Don't drag others down with you.
Lo Wing-hung
Bastille Commentary
** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **
China's strategy is simple: throw one punch to avoid a hundred.
On Wednesday, August 5, China fired back with five consecutive moves to counter a string of recent US measures that Beijing sees as hostile. A spokesperson for China's Ministry of Commerce called the countermeasures "generally restrained." The message was clear: since the China-US presidential meeting in Busan, the US Federal Communications Commission has ignored China's strong opposition and industry appeals. It keeps stretching the concept of national security to roll out restrictions on China.
Meanwhile, the US has added over 40 Chinese entities to the so-called Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act entity list. China demands the US immediately revoke these measures. And if Washington insists on new restrictions, "China will further retaliate."
China's moves are a direct answer to a series of petty US actions that fall into two main areas.
First, the FCC. Before the government took action, the People's Daily fired a warning shot. Under the byline "Zhong Sheng," it blasted the FCC for hiding behind banners like "non-discrimination" and "national security" to discriminate against and suppress Chinese companies.
The FCC recently added foreign-made power inverters and advanced robotic equipment to its so-called "Covered List." That means new models can't get certification and are locked out of the US market. The paper called the tactic typical unilateral bullying.
This isn't new. Back in 2021, the FCC put telecom and video surveillance gear from five Chinese companies on the list. Since then, it has steadily widened the net. In April, it proposed revoking the qualifications of testing and certification bodies from countries that haven't signed a "Mutual Recognition Agreement" with the US. That artificially raises the compliance bar for Chinese products.
And now, Reuters reports the FCC is drafting a ban on imports of new Chinese-made optical communication transceivers for data centers.
Second, the Xinjiang sanctions. On July 30, the US Department of Homeland Security added over 40 Chinese entities to the entity list under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The move, effective August 3, swells the list from 144 to 187, the biggest expansion since it was created. The new targets span food, clothing, and cotton. They include snack maker Qia Qia melon seeds, frozen food producer Zhengzhou Synear dumplings, and apparel brand Fujian Septwolves.
When the news hit the Chinese internet, netizens erupted in mockery. The joke going around teasing that "eating melon seeds can easily damage US soldiers' teeth."
China didn't waste a second. It fired back with five countermeasures, and the first one hits where it hurts: drones. Beijing is tightening export controls on drones and related technologies to the US. From now on, every shipment of drones, key components, and controlled technologies will face a strict case-by-case review.
And forget about any 'licensing facilitation' exemptions—those are off the table. Think about it: China is the world's drone superpower. The US wanted to block Chinese drones from coming in. Now China is flipping the script—it's restricting what goes out. The message is blunt: just because you want to buy doesn't mean we'll sell. Especially not advanced drones and components with military uses.
The second measure is a highly targeted strike: China has added six US entities to its Countermeasures List, all of which it says assisted US sanctions on Xinjiang-related companies.
Applied DNA Sciences, Inc. is believed to provide DNA-based traceability and verification services for relevant products.
Stratum Reservoir, LLC is believed to conduct stable-isotope testing and related analysis to determine the origin of Xinjiang-linked materials.
Altana Technologies, Inc., which operates a global supply-chain mapping and management platform, is believed to help the US government trace supply chains involving Xinjiang-linked products.
The Responsible Business Alliance, which promotes responsible business conduct in global supply chains and operates assessment programmes for member companies, is believed to help companies exclude Xinjiang-linked products from their supply chains.
Verité Group, Inc., a nonprofit focused on labour rights and human rights, examines alleged forced labour in global supply chains.
Human Rights in China, a New York-based human-rights organization, advocates sanctions related to Xinjiang.
China’s countermeasures against these six entities are therefore highly targeted.
The third measure targets a US compliance testing company that helped the FCC impose China-related sanctions. That company will now be locked out of the compliance testing business in the Chinese market. The ripple effect: it could drive up compliance costs for US products trying to enter China.
The fourth measure hits at the heart of product certification. China is suspending the entrustment of US agencies to conduct factory follow-up inspections for CCC certification. Remember, CCC certification is a must-have for US products to enter the Chinese market. By pulling the plug on US inspectors, China shifts the review work to its own agencies. That spells more time and more uncertainty for American exporters.
The fifth measure, a national security investigation into imported US printing and copying office equipment. On the surface, this one looks like a light tap.
China imported about $2.08 billion worth of such equipment in 2025, mostly from Japan ($1.72 billion). The US slice was small. But this is just the opening move.
The US has banned Chinese software and hardware from connected and autonomous vehicles on American roads—and until now, China held its fire.
Now Beijing is investigating US printers and copiers on national security grounds. The message is unmistakable: if Washington plays the national security card at every turn, Beijing can just as easily slap an 'unsafe' label on American phones and EVs running US software.
But that's not the main battlefield. Artificial intelligence is the real arena. Over the past month, Chinese companies have rolled out one high-performance, low-cost AI model after another, sending US AI giants reeling. When Anthropic released a new model in June, the US government demanded it be kept out of non-American hands. The clash forced Anthropic to pull the model. Trump signed an executive order in June setting up an AI safety framework, including a voluntary program for companies to submit cutting-edge models for government review.
Then Chinese developers like Moonshot AI and DeepSeek unleashed open-source systems that rival top-tier US models, fueling a fierce debate in Washington over how to regulate open-weight models. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei pushed for mandatory government safety reviews for both open and proprietary models, taking direct aim at Chinese open-source systems. He won backing from Treasury Secretary Bessent and others, but ran into a wall of opposition from US tech giants, including Nvidia.
On August 4, the Trump administration delivered its verdict. In a meeting led by the Office of the National Cyber Director, top US AI companies were told that under the new AI safety framework, open-source models from Chinese rivals would not face US government safety testing.
For Anthropic, it was a crushing defeat. US National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross later spelled out the thinking at a cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas: the US government wants to back the American open-source AI ecosystem. He called such models 'tremendously valuable' and insisted the regulatory framework must stay 'flexible.'
Otherwise, he warned, 'it would not only stifle growth, development, and innovation, but the regulatory regime would become obsolete within 48 hours of completing its process.'
The bottom line: Washington keeps chipping away at China with petty moves. But when the pile gets high enough, Beijing punches back hard—and signals it has heavier blows ready.
President Xi is due to visit the US in September, and Trump will be in Shenzhen in mid-November for the APEC summit. Trump doesn't want things to spiral out of control; at crunch time, he'll yank the leash on his officials.
The real battlefield is artificial intelligence. It was almost certain that the White House's decision to leave Chinese open-source models alone came after fierce pushback from China.
Lo Wing-hung
