Hong Kong has literally hundreds of US-sponsored NGOs, plus online media, newspapers, university departments, foreign reporters, stabbing at China from underneath, all with the purpose of destabilising China and overthrowing its government. There are many dozens of Western-oriented political and propaganda organisations, staffed by foreigners and indoctrinated Hongkongnese who constantly denigrate China and push the US political and ideological agenda. To those of us resident in the Mainland, it sometimes appears that Hong Kong has been transformed into one big US war club to beat China into submission. China’s ‘reform and open’ policy has legalized foreign infiltration into every aspect of the HK economy and society, allowing Hong Kong, now officially under Chinese sovereignty, to continue to be an anti-China foreign base and a hot-bed safe haven for promoting unrest on the mainland. From the NED website alone, we can document tens of millions of dollars spent each year in Hong Kong for these purposes. The NED also spends millions of US dollars in attempts to recast its own imperial political ambitions as “protection” for the human rights of HK residents and a benevolent wish for what it terms ‘democratic representation’. It also uses Hong Kong as a base for an enormous amount of political campaigning meant to draw local HK and international attention to the political changes it hopes to effect in Hong Kong, by disguising and presenting them as human rights issues.
The US attempts to take the lead in all public debate within Hong Kong, dictating in advance the terms and conditions within which this debate will take place. The NED carries out so-called “public opinion research” and initiates organised “public debates” on Hong Kong’s political system, centering on US-dictated models of constitutional reform, with attempts to propagandise these to the Hong Kong population and try to force a consensus that these are the only models acceptable to Hong Kong residents. The NED publishes discussion papers and other information, presenting this US-selected content as the only model relevant for Hong Kong, thereby pushing to the side the wishes and aims of China’s central government. Other branches and agencies of the US government are already spending many millions of dollars propagandising Hong Kong residents, creating NGOs, organising protest groups and other mechanisms to create potentially serious disruptions in Hong Kong in order to force political changes that would benefit US foreign policy interests.

The range of interference is unimaginable to an average Westerner. George Soros funds the so-called China Media Project, run by David Bandurski at Hong Kong University, tasked with trashing Mainland China. It was Bandurski who fabricated the stories of China’s “50-cent army”, claiming China’s government had hired 280,000 people who were paid US$0.50 for each favorable internet post about China. The game succeeded for years until someone published screen shots of the Israel government actually and literally offering all Jewish university students US$0.50 for every post made that favored Israel. At that point, Bandurski’s false claims disappeared overnight. As another example, the US government has sponsored several ‘speakers bureaux’ with an imaginatively seditious nature, and staffed by former US diplomatic and White House personnel. The plan is to recruit middle-level Chinese officials and businessmen to profit from invitations as speakers at a multitude of events. Given their lack of experience, the bureau managers provide not only appropriate topics but a handy outline of the speeches, replete with not-too-veiled demands for the removal of China’s government system, for the abolition of China’s SOEs, for the fire sales of China’s infrastructure to European bankers, and much more. If successful, the US will have thousands of unwitting Chinese traveling their country while selling their own countrymen the American road to destruction.
These plans involve not only propaganda but violence. We have seen plenty of that in Hong Kong in recent months, but there was more we haven’t seen. It wasn’t reported in the Western media, but during the ‘Occupy Central’ demonstrations several years ago, Hong Kong police discovered caches of bomb-making equipment that included very high-explosive materials, and masks bearing the likeness of Guy Fawkes, who was behind a failed plot to blow up Britain’s Parliament. At the same location, police also found maps of the Wan Chai and Admiralty neighborhoods, locations of the city legislature and government headquarters and also the Mainland Chinese Army base. Officials concluded at the time that the CIA had produced a small core of fanatics and supplied them with materials and instruction for committing grave acts of violence.
China’s wish several years ago to include what the West termed “communist propaganda” in Hong Kong schools, was more an attempt to introduce the truth of Hong Kong’s history to the people of Hong Kong, the resulting demonstrations against this effort clearly having been directed from outside, and for obvious reasons. The 2019 protests were triggered initially by Mainland China’s request for an extradition bill with Hong Kong, a request hardly unusual since all nations have extradition agreements between states and provinces. The reason is that if someone commits a crime in New York and then runs to Virginia, the NYC police have no authority in that state and cannot simply cross the border to search and arrest, but must rely on local law enforcement. Hence, the extradition agreements. Further, China has several good reasons for wanting such agreements with Hong Kong and Taiwan. For one, more than a few Mainland Chinese businessmen or government officials have embezzled money or defrauded investors, then fled to Hong Kong to live the good life free of repatriation fears. Understandably, China would like those individuals brought back home to stand trial. A similar problem, and perhaps larger, is that more than a few Hong Kong residents have travelled to the Mainland, committed fairly large numbers of imaginative and not-so-imaginative crimes, primarily large-scale fraud but also including espionage and murder, then fled back to Hong Kong, again out of reach of the Mainland Chinese police.
There is however a third category, one not mentioned in the media, that was the likely cause of the US so ardently fanning the flames for this latest series of riots. The Americans have a huge contingent in Hong Kong (about 80,000 people, few of whom are businessmen), beginning with the US Consulate but extending very much farther with the media, the NED, and the entire alphabet soup of US-based NGOs, George Soros’ Hong Kong Media Project, and many more, mostly but not all CIA-funded, on a permanent mission to stab at Mainland China from its underbelly of Hong Kong.Much of what these people do, is illegal, against HK law, Mainland China law, and international law, but they are protected in Hong Kong by US government pressure and, without an extradition treaty, they cannot be sent to China and be brought to trial. The Americans needed for their own sake to kill that extradition bill, and they succeeded. The enormous violence they instigated will likely ensure that bill won’t be introduced again for a long time, if ever.
I will say that Hong Kong was one of my favorite cities 20 or 30 years ago. At the time, I thought it a great city and full of life. Those days are gone. I have been to Hong Kong 50 or more times, the experience quality slowly degrading until now it is mostly unpleasant, and especially so for Mainland Chinese who are very often insulted, abused, spat upon, and sometimes assaulted, by the same young students today seeking “democracy and freedom” by torching subway stations.
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Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 34 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chap. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
His full archive can be seen at
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com