From Moved to Fooled — Who Wants Their Children to End Up on the Wrong Side of the Law?

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 **

On the surface, China-US relations look calm. In reality, both sides are locked in close combat.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on July 22. The meeting took place on the sidelines of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Manila.

According to Xinhua, Wang Yi told Rubio that this year marks a landmark year for China-US relations. He noted that the two heads of state held a historic summit in Beijing, which established a positioning of "constructive and stable" strategic relations between the two countries.

Wang also set out China's firm position on what he called a series of negative words and actions by the US side. He demanded that Washington respect China's core interests, abide by the one-China principle, effectively manage frictions and disagreements, and address China's legitimate concerns, so that this year of opportunity for bilateral relations can become reality. Xinhua described the meeting as pragmatic, positive, and constructive.

Wang Yi's phrase "recent series of negative words and actions by the US" deserves close attention. The fact that the meeting was ultimately summed up as "constructive" suggests Washington offered certain commitments behind closed doors.

Two recent moves from the US side stand out as negative. While Washington has delayed new arms sales to Taiwan, it has refused to commit to stopping them altogether. The other issue is tied to AI large language models. China's Moonshot AI recently released its new Kimi K3 model, and its capabilities have caught up with America's most advanced systems.

The breakthrough triggered intense attention and drew a wave of negative commentary from US officials.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insists that America remains ahead. He claims the US leads China in AI by roughly a year. His next goal is to push America's share of global computing capacity from the current 60 percent straight up to 80 percent.

Bessent then said on July 21 that Washington would rigorously scrutinize AI models developed overseas with open-source code, including products released by Chinese firms. Should any such model be found to have stolen the intellectual property of US companies, he said, the US government has the means to impose sanctions.

Bessent also said the US government may go a step further and assess whether American companies using Chinese AI models should be required to disclose this to their customers. He likened the issue to that of counterfeit goods, stressing that businesses cannot use products built on stolen intellectual property.

These remarks show that the Trump administration has been thrown off balance by China's new model. It is now scrambling for ways to suppress it. The scrutiny of China's AI sector, which had focused on export controls over advanced chips, may now widen to cover training data, the provenance of underlying technology, corporate disclosure obligations, and intellectual property disputes. Fresh risk added to the US-China AI rivalry.

It's fair to assume that Wang Yi's warning to Rubio went beyond demanding a full halt to US arms sales to Taiwan. The warning was also aimed squarely at Bessent's remarks, calling for an end to the smearing and suppression of Chinese AI models.

This can be summed up in two points.

First, faced with the shock of China's AI advances, the US wants to preserve its own technological lead while unjustly suppressing others at the same time. No amount of spin from Bessent can whitewash that kind of behavior.

Second, Bessent's accusation that Chinese models copied American ones is, in essence, a trumped-up charge. It is one the US can investigate, "convict," and sanction entirely on its own terms. Wang Yi's warning was, in effect, laying the unpleasant truth on the table in advance.

From Beijing's perspective, if Washington uses this as a pretext to escalate, China could immediately turn the tables. President Xi could simply decline to visit the US in September, and Trump, in turn, need not bother coming to Shenzhen in October. That would inevitably rattle the US economy and stock market, right before Trump has to explain himself to voters in November's midterm elections.