Hong Kong activists deny that Global Times photos show protests had foreign funding

Tabloid reveals photos with man later charged with intervening in Hong Kong affairs, as Beijing moves to impose national security law on the city

Former student activist recalls ‘random short conversation’ in 2014, denying it endangered national security

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Leung Kwok-hung (right) said his meeting with Lee Henley Hu Xiang occurred in 2014 when he was a legislator. Photo: Weibo

Published: 5:29pm, 26 May 2020Updated: 11:18pm, 26 May 2020

A Chinese nationalist newspaper has released undated photographs showing Hong Kong activists meeting a man later charged with endangering China’s national security, but the activists deny receiving funding from him.

Amid heightened anti-government tensions in Hong Kong, Global Times, a tabloid affiliated with Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, published photos on Saturday that appeared to show former Hong Kong student leader Alex Chow Yong-kang and activist “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung separately meeting Lee Henley Hu Xiang, who last month became the first overseas national charged by China with intervening in Hong Kong affairs.

Global Times claimed the photos were evidence of foreign forces funding the Hong Kong protests. It said the photos showed that Lee, a citizen of Belize, had been “using his cover identity as a US company representative in China to harvest money in the mainland in a frenzy, and then used this money to fund these troublemakers in Hong Kong”.

But Chow and Leung both denied the accusation on Tuesday, with Chow saying they “don’t actually know” Lee and did not obtain funding from him.

An undated photograph shows former student leader Alex Chow Yong-kang (right) with Lee Henley Hu Xiang. Photo: Weibo

“I perhaps met this person for less than one minute in 2014,” Chow told the South China Morning Post. “I don’t know this person, not even his name. I hope the Chinese secret police are not torturing him.”