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Two Activists Visiting U.S. Call for Rights in Hong Kong

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Two Hong Kong democracy activists — one young enough to be the other’s grandson — expressed deep distrust on Tuesday over China’s intentions and urged President Obama to press their cause when meeting his Chinese counterpart this week.
The activists, Joshua Wong, 18, and Martin Lee, 77, also said it was in the interests of China’s president, Xi Jinping, to allow Hong Kong all of the democratic rights promised when Britain returned the territory to China in 1997.
Chinese leaders should regard Hong Kong as “a testing ground for China,” Mr. Lee said during a meeting with members of the editorial board of The New York Times.
Mr. Wong and Mr. Lee were visiting the United States to attend the 75th anniversary of Freedom House, a pro-democracy monitoring organization. It is using the occasion to commend their work for the Hong Kong democracy movement, which captured the world’s attention last year with enormous demonstrations and sit-ins to protest what they called China’s unkept pledges to permit universal suffrage and other democratic rights.

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A third activist, Benny Tai, will be honored at the Freedom House anniversary, which will take place Thursday in Washington and will coincide with a working dinner at the White House for China’s visiting president.
Mr. Lee, the founding member of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, said Mr. Obama should use the occasion to remind China of its Hong Kong pledges.
“If China doesn’t deliver on democracy on Hong Kong, then your president ought to know that any agreement that he might enter into with Xi Jinping could end up the same way,” Mr. Lee said.
Hong Kong, he said, “has this great relevance now: If Hong Kong is actually the testing ground of democracy for China, then there is hope that Xi Jinping’s great China dream might materialize.”
Mr. Wong, a skinny college student who rocketed to fame for politically mobilizing his generation in Hong Kong, said that his telephone had been tapped and that he had been pilloried by the pro-Beijing news media.
“They say I am a C.I.A. agent, or even that I received U.S. military training,” he said.
Last month, the Hong Kong authorities charged him with inciting and participating in an unlawful assembly for his role in the protests, which carries a maximum prison sentence of five years. His trial is scheduled for Oct. 26. 
Still, under his bail terms, Mr. Wong was permitted to leave Hong Kong to visit the United States — in part, he said, because he had secured a long-term visa in 2014.
“That shows the rule of law still exists in Hong Kong,” Mr. Lee said.
Mr. Wong has been engaged in political activism since he was 14, helping to found a group called Scholarism to protest an effort by the Chinese authorities to promote a “patriotic education” curriculum in Hong Kong schools.
He is perhaps better known for leading more than 200,000 peaceful protesters last year in the so-called Umbrella Revolution movement for greater electoral rights, in which they used umbrellas to deflect police pepper spray.
While the movement did not win concessions from the authorities in Beijing, it caught the world’s attention and awakened many Hong Kong people to the ticking clock on their political future.
A prosperous former British colony, Hong Kong reverted to China under an agreement in 1997 based on the “one country, two systems” formula, which permitted liberties and independent institutions unknown in the rest of China. The arrangement was supposed to last at least 50 years.
But democracy advocates in Hong Kong have increasingly expressed frustration over what they view as China’s efforts to assert more political control in violation of the agreement.
“We see that they are trying to eliminate the difference between Hong Kong and mainland China,” Mr. Wong said. Under the worst-case projection, he said, “after 2047, ‘one country, two systems’ will change back to ‘one country, one system.’ ”
Correction: September 22, 2015 
An earlier version of this article misstated when the Hong Kong authorities charged Joshua Wong. It was last month, not this month.
Correction: September 22, 2015 
An earlier version of this article misstated the precise charges against Mr. Wong made by the Hong Kong authorities last month, for which he faces a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment. He was charged with inciting and participating in an unlawful assembly — not incitement, contempt of court and obstruction of the police. (He was charged in April with contempt of court and in July with obstruction of the police in an unrelated incident.)
A version of this article appears in print on September 23, 2015, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Two Activists Visiting U.S. Call for Rights in Hong Kong. Order Reprints|  Today's Paper|Subscribe