Charles Mok: The Hong Kong Internet Pioneer
Charles Mok is a Hong Kong native who experienced the government’s control of the internet first-hand as an ISP from the very beginning. After founding his company and selling it for the first time, he tried to politically save the free internet and free Hong Kong by siding with civil society.
In 2020, he resigned from the Hong Kong Legislative Council, of which he had been a member for eight years, and left politics to find a “freer environment” for his new job. Today, he conducts research at Stanford and is a board member of the international Internet Society.
Mok’s interest in the political and regulatory steps of digital ecosystems led him to research the transformation processes within government and business in Japan and Taiwan. Now, with his new job at Stanford, he has the opportunity to travel and explore these developments.
Mok’s first encounter with the internet was in 1983 when he took a programming course in his first year at Purdue University and started emailing his friends who had enrolled at other US colleges. Later, he even tried emailing friends in Hong Kong, but the process was not easy, and he had to figure out the route for the email through trial and error.
Mok studied computers and electrical engineering, focusing more on software than hardware. He did not have much idea about career opportunities when he was done, and there were hardly any role models for him. Nevertheless, he has become a pioneer in the Hong Kong internet industry and an inspiration for many.
