‘I don’t expect to live a normal life’: how a Leeds teenager woke up with a Chinese bounty on her head

After speaking out about the suppression of Hong Kong’s protests, Chloe Cheung was targeted by Beijing, followed on the street and abused online. Yet she remains defiant

I

t was Christmas Eve 2024 and 19-year-old Chloe Cheung was lying in bed at home in Leeds when she found out the Chinese authorities had put a bounty on her head. As she scrolled through Instagram looking at festive songs, a stream of messages from old school friends started coming into her phone. Look at the news, they told her.

Media outlets across east Asia were reporting that Cheung, who had just finished her A-levels, had been declared a threat to national security by officials in Hong Kong. There was an offer of HK$1m (£94,000) to anyone who could assist in her arrest or capture.

News reports included a photograph of her aged 11, seemingly the only picture officials had of her before she and her family left to resettle in the UK in 2020. “I couldn’t even really recognise myself,” she says.