Exiled HK-Leader Nathan Law's Book Slams China's Authoritarianism

“What does it mean to be free in a world increasingly shaped by the rising authoritarian power of the People’s Republic of China?” Hong Kong activist Nathan Law asks in his new book, written from exile in the United Kingdom, Melissa Chan recently wrote for Foreign Policy.

Photo Insert: Nathan Law fled Hong Kong to avoid arrest under the National Security Law.

He finds his answer in the essential features of a democratic society: The right to protest, the rule of law, and a free press. But Law’s most significant personal act of political freedom may be the publication of the book itself.

In September 2016, at 23, Law became Hong Kong’s youngest elected legislator, winning 50,818 votes before his court-ordered disqualification on the specious charge he had failed to sincerely take his oath of office.

That is 50,818 more votes than Chinese President Xi Jinping has ever won in a free and fair election, and Law’s voice—legitimate and representative—makes him a threat to the regime, along with other prominent activists in the last decade’s youth protests.

Beijing has campaigned to wreck Law’s character, labeling him a fugitive after his departure to avoid imminent arrest under the draconian 2020 national security law to destroy any attempt to fight for Hong Kongers’ rights inside or out of the system.

“Freedom: How We Lose It and How We Fight Back,” published with co-author Evan Fowler, is not a memoir. Law has instead produced a treatise on democracy interspersed with his autobiography.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aggressively seeks to rewrite Hong Kong’s history, painting the 2019 and 2020 protests that once brought around 20 percent of residents to the streets as the work of foreign operators and terrorists.

Law’s book serves as a record of what his generation stood for—and what has happened to the people of Hong Kong—no matter which substitute version of history Beijing promulgates.

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