Hong Kong's top court on Thursday upheld the sedition convictions of former activist Tam Tak-chi over a string of incitement incidents in public in 2020.

The Court of Final Appeal also maintained the former vice chairman of People Power's jail sentence of three years and four months for sedition and public order-related offences.

Tam's lawyers argued that the case should have been tried by a High Court jury, not the District Court.

They also said the prosecutors should be required to prove the appellant had the intention to incite others to engage in violence or create a public disorder.

However, the top court judges dismissed both arguments.

They said it was valid for a magistrate to transfer the case to the District Court.

The judges also ruled that clauses of the old sedition laws didn't require proof of the intention to incite as an element of the offence.

They noted the crimes listed all came with an "or" rather than an "and", dismissing the lawyers' reliance on a clause that states it is only an offence when a person counsels "disobedience to law or to any lawful order".

"[The clause] constitutes only one of the various alternative forms of seditious intention each of which is capable of constituting the offence," the judges wrote.

Tam was prosecuted and jailed under the decades-old sedition laws, before the enactment of the local national security legislation under Basic Law Article 23.