On May 7, two British-Chinese dual nationals were convicted at the Old Bailey in London on espionage charges. Peter Wai and Bill Yuen were found guilty of running a “shadow policing” operation against Hong Kong dissidents from within Yuen’s workplace, the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO). Using Wai’s contacts and access to sensitive information from his role as an immigration official within the U.K. Home Office, the pair surveilled pro-democracy Hong Konger activists and attempted to launch an operation to illegally seize and return to China a woman suspected of fraud, in the style of China’s Operation Fox Hunt.
For the United Kingdom’s small coterie of exiled pro-democracy Hong Konger activists, the successful prosecution serves as vindication of their concerns about the transnational reach of the Hong Kong government. Since 2022, Hong Kong authorities have sought to pursue exiled activists with the aim of either silencing them or “persuading” them to return to face prosecution in Hong Kong. It has imposed US$130,000 (HK$1 million) bounties on 19 activists living in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia, and US$25,500 (HK$200,000) bounties on 15 more individuals. The youngest of these, Chloe Cheung, was aged 19 at the time the bounty was issued.
