The A-level student who became an enemy of the Chinese state

Just over a year ago, Chloe Cheung was sitting her A-levels. Now she's on a Chinese government list of wanted dissidents. The choir girl-turned-democracy activist woke up to news in December that police in Hong Kong had issued a $HK1 million ($100,000; £105,000) reward for information leading to her capture abroad. "I actually just wanted to take a gap year after school," Chloe, 19, who lives in London, told the BBC. "But I've ended up with a bounty!"

Chloe is the youngest of 19 activists accused of breaching a national security law introduced by Beijing in response to huge pro-democracy protests in the former British colony five years ago. In 2021, she and her family moved to the UK under a special visa scheme for Hong Kongers. She can probably never return to her home city and says she has to be careful about where she travels.

Her protest work has made her a fugitive of the Chinese state, a detail not lost on me as we meet one icy morning in the café in the crypt of Westminster Abbey. In medieval England, churches provided sanctuary from arrest.

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