Asia

Hong Kong appeals court upholds Hong Kong 47 subversion sentences

Unofficial primary election treated as conspiracy, Coordination becomes the banned technology of politics

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Police stand guard outside the West Kowloon Magistrates' Courts as twelve pro-democracy activists appeal their convictions and sentences in a landmark national security case, in Hong Kong on Monday. Police stand guard outside the West Kowloon Magistrates' Courts as twelve pro-democracy activists appeal their convictions and sentences in a landmark national security case, in Hong Kong on Monday. japantimes.co.jp
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Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal on Monday upheld jail terms for 12 pro-democracy figures convicted in the “Hong Kong 47” national security case, rejecting their challenge to convictions for conspiracy to commit subversion, according to Reuters. The case stems from an unofficial 2020 primary election run by the democratic camp to coordinate candidates for the then-upcoming Legislative Council election. Most defendants were sentenced in late 2024 to between four and ten years, after mass arrests in early 2021.

The legal theory is blunt: coordination itself is treated as the threat. The primary was not an attempt to seize power by force; it was an attempt to lower the opposition’s transaction costs—screening candidates, consolidating support, and avoiding vote-splitting—so that a minority with limited resources could translate public sympathy into seats. Under Hong Kong’s post-2020 electoral architecture, that kind of efficiency is precisely what the system is designed to prevent. If the state can criminalise the method by which an opposition becomes coherent, it does not need to outlaw the opposition as an identity; it can outlaw the tools that make it effective.

Once courts accept that premise, the boundary of lawful politics becomes a licensing question. A campaign meeting can be recast as “organisation”; a slate can be recast as “conspiracy”; a promise to vote a certain way can be recast as “subversion”. The incentives then run in one direction: political participation becomes safer when it is atomised, improvisational, and easily monitored, and riskier when it is disciplined and repeatable. That is also why the state focuses on organisers rather than voters. Voters are numerous; organisers are few, legible, and punishable.

International reactions have followed a familiar script. Rights groups and governments including the US and Britain have condemned the prosecutions and called for releases, Reuters reports, but the cost is mostly reputational. The benefit for Beijing and the Hong Kong government is operational: a precedent that turns collective electoral strategy into a security offence, and a warning that makes future coordination expensive even before police intervene.

Police stood guard outside the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts as the appeal was heard. The ruling leaves the city’s most prominent attempt at an opposition primary on the record as a national security crime.