He defends the West while the West itself threatens to become lame, cowardly and decadent

Seven years ago, Joshua Wong sat across from me. And talked about his fight for freedom in Hong Kong. When I asked him if he wasn't afraid, he looked at me calmly. He shook his head. And said, “Because we have nothing to lose.” Wong doesn't blink. Whatever price must be paid for freedom, he will pay it. He has been politically active since he was 15. And risks everything.

In November 2024, Wong was sentenced to four and a half years in prison in Hong Kong. This verdict was a scandal. It showed what a depraved dictatorship China is. And how right everyone is who warns how dangerous dependence on China is - and reminds us that only economic strength and market economic conditions can eliminate this dependence.

Now Wong has been sentenced again and even more harshly, to ten additional years - and the West remains strangely silent. There are also no left-wing professional activists who write public letters of protest to the Chinese authorities.

Wong is like us: he wants to be free like us. He defends the West while the West itself threatens to become lame, cowardly and decadent - mired in ridiculous debates, bowed to the spirit of the times. Wong reminds us where the real conflicts of this time are. It's about freedom. The freedom of the individual and the courage to stand up against authoritarian systems and dictatorships.

Wong wrote a column with Glacier Kwong in WELT AM SONNTAG about the situation in Hong Kong, her once liberal hometown, which was coming under increasing pressure from Beijing. After Wong's imprisonment in 2020, Kwong continued the column alone - and showed that the fight for Hong Kong's freedom is becoming increasingly dangerous and that the West is largely letting China have its way.

The West is abandoning the freedom fighters. In Ukraine, for example, but also in Venezuela, Turkey, Iran and especially in China. China cannot be a partner for anything. The country is the enemy of the West – its liberal self-image, its human rights, its democratic constitution.

The lesson can only be to become even stronger, economically, in foreign policy and in defense policy. And also culturally. Someone like Joshua Wong understood Western freedom better than large parts of the Western establishment, which has become comfortable, fed up and lazy to think.

“If our politicians don’t stand up for our future, then I have to be on the front line and fight for my future myself,” he explained to me in an interview. Joshua Wong made it clear: Citizenship is no longer defined by status symbols, but by the willingness to fight for more freedom and - as is currently necessary in Germany - to fight against the creeping loss of freedom at all levels.

Joshua, hold on, you are the future of the country! In the end, bondage will not win.