SOCIAL ACTIVISTS from Hong Kong

Top 3

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Chinese Social Activists of all time. This list of famous Chinese Social Activists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Szeto Wah (1931 - 2011)

With an HPI of 46.11, Szeto Wah is the most famous Chinese Social Activist.  His biography has been translated into 18 different languages on wikipedia.

Szeto Wah (Chinese: 司徒華; 28 February 1931 – 2 January 2011) was a Hong Kong democracy activist and politician. He was the founding chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union and former member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong from 1985 to 1997 and from 1997 to 2004. Being one of the two icons of the Hong Kong democracy movement alongside Martin Lee, Szeto played an instrumental role in the emergence of the pro-democracy camp. Entering politics as a trade unionist for teachers, Szeto founded the influential Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union and was first elected to the colonial legislature through the newly created Teaching functional constituency in 1985. He and Martin Lee became the two pro-democrats appointed to the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee by the Beijing government in 1985 until the duo resigned in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. Szeto played a significant part in gathering popular support of the Hong Kong public in the Tiananmen democracy movement and subsequently the Operation Yellowbird rescuing the wanted democracy activists. He also founded the Hong Kong Alliance which has been responsible for the annual memorials for the protests. On the basis of the pro-democracy support he also co-founded the United Democrats of Hong Kong to contest in the first Legislative Council direct elections which later transformed into the Democratic Party. Szeto remained as the unofficial party whip of the Democratic Party. He retired from the Legislative Council in 2004 and retained his influence in the pan-democracy camp. In 2010, he led the moderate faction of the camp to oppose the radical-led Five Constituencies Referendum movement and played a significant role in drawing the revised proposal of the electoral reform package in the Democrats' negotiation with the Beijing authorities. He remained the chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance until he died in 2011 at the age of 79.

2. Marguerite Higgins (1920 - 1966)

With an HPI of 41.91, Marguerite Higgins is the 2nd most famous Chinese Social Activist.  Her biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Marguerite Higgins Hall (September 3, 1920 – January 3, 1966) was an American reporter and war correspondent. Higgins covered World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, and in the process advanced the cause of equal access for female war correspondents. She had a long career with the New York Herald Tribune (1942–1963) and as a syndicated columnist for Newsday (1963–1965). She was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Foreign Correspondence awarded in 1951 for her coverage of the Korean War. She subsequently won Long Island University's George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting for articles from behind enemy lines in Korea and other nations in 1952.

3. Joshua Wong (b. 1996)

With an HPI of 37.44, Joshua Wong is the 3rd most famous Chinese Social Activist.  His biography has been translated into 35 different languages.

Joshua Wong Chi-fung (Chinese: 黃之鋒; Cantonese Yale: Wòhng Jīfūng; born 13 October 1996) is a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and politician. He served as secretary-general of the pro-democracy party Demosistō until it disbanded following implementation of the Hong Kong national security law on 30 June 2020. Wong was previously convenor and founder of the Hong Kong student activist group Scholarism. Wong first rose to international prominence during the 2014 Hong Kong protests, and his pivotal role in the Umbrella Movement resulted in his inclusion in Time magazine's Most Influential Teens of 2014 and nomination for its 2014 Person of the Year; he was named one of the "world's greatest leaders" by Fortune magazine in 2015, and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. In August 2017, Wong and two other democracy activists were convicted and jailed for their roles in the occupation of Civic Square at the incipient stage of the 2014 Occupy Central protests; in January 2018, Wong was convicted and jailed again for failing to comply with a court order for clearance of the Mong Kok protest site during the Hong Kong protests in 2014. He also played a major role in persuading U.S. members of Congress to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act during the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. Wong was disqualified by the Hong Kong government from running in forthcoming District Council elections. In June 2020, he announced he would run for a Legislative Council seat in the upcoming election, and officially applied on 20 July 2020, before his nomination was invalidated on 30 July 2020 along with that of 11 other pro-democracy figures. In December 2020, Wong was convicted and jailed for more than a year over an unauthorised protest outside police headquarters in June 2019. In a national security trial in 2024, a Hong Kong court sentenced Wong to jail for 4 years and 8 months for subversion.