Trojan Horse in Hong Kong
Updated: 2014-11-13 08:48
By Timothy Chui(HK Edition)
If 'Occupy Central' is indeed funded by a US agency, as an anonymously published report suggests, what are they expecting to gain? A couple of political experts share their views with Timothy Chui.
Local anger is stirring following an anonymous report claiming "Occupy Central" is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a private foundation described in a 1999 United States Consulate report as an "official delegation" of the US government.
The report, from an anonymous source, written in English, claims that NED paid out a total of HK$34,514,352 in cash funds directly and through subsidiaries since 2000 to 10 groups in Hong Kong.
China Daily was able to verify the majority of the report's figures through annual reports still available at the NED's website.
The informant declares that several of the groups receiving the NED funding prepared the groundwork for the political agitation that has, for more than a month, disrupted the governance, commerce, the rule of law and the lives of ordinary citizens of Hong Kong. The statement continues that other groups, though not directly involved in planning the disruptions, are avid supporters of the ongoing illegal blockades.
"The report provides unequivocal evidence that US government funds are being used to support the 'Occupy Central' protests," the source, identified as "A Hong Kong Citizen", wrote, accusing the US government of "hijacking the entire democratic discussion in Hong Kong" through the work of NED and its subsidiaries.
The report, "showing how US government funds have been used to provide support to the 'Occupy Central' protests", alleges planning for the illegal occupations began in 2012, when NED doled out nearly HK$3.58 million to create the mechanics for members of the opposition, university students in particular, to "more effectively participate in the public debate on political reform".
Designs on the future
NED subsidiary National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) financed reports titled "Accountability without Democracy?" and "Birdcage or Framework?" which were used to frame how opposition groups would approach the dialogue over political reform.
Funding was handed out for the Design Democracy website, mounted by the University of Hong Kong's (HKU) Centre for Comparative and Public Law, where law professor and "Occupy Central" mastermind Benny Tai Yiu-ting served as a board member.
By 2013 the website, described by local press as a rival to the government's portal for public consultation on electoral reform, was up and running. Later the platform and its social media companion pages served as a clearing house for coordinating protest efforts, with posts assuaging fears over criminal liabilities or about the illegal occupation.
Articles posted during the early days of the protests suggested the appointment of protest marshals and site plans including the construction of long-term facilities, warehousing of provisions and other logistics needed for a long-term occupation.
As "Occupy Central" took hold of the city, the platform became a vehicle to take the pulse of the protest movement. One survey asked respondents if they would be prepared to re-occupy streets cleared previously by authorities.
The report also highlighted the role of public opinion polls by HKU, as well as Hong Kong Baptist University's Transition Project. Both, according to the report, received NED funding that ultimately was "used to influence public opinion". The informant alleged that the polls were framed so as to make them heavily biased in favor of the opposition cause.
"Releasing survey results at a critical time in a debate can influence the outcome of the debate, a tactic which has been used to good effect in Hong Kong," the report's author stated.
Among other NED funding recipients, the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor (HKHRM) received the most enduring and generous support, the report alleged. Monitor Director Law Yuk-kai told China Daily that his non-government organization was entitled to accept donations.
He refused to respond to repeated enquiries about whether the NGO accepted more than HK$13 million from NED or its subsidiaries, as detailed in the report. Law also said he was unable to answer whether NED funds comprised the bulk of the HKHRM's funding.
NED vice-president of programs (Asia, Middle East, North Africa and Global) Louise Greve has stated that they handed out more than 1,000 grants annually to partner groups around the world at an average of HK$390,000 per annum. The monitor received an average of just under a million dollars a year from NED, according to the informant's report.
Greve says while NED is funded by appropriations from the US Congress, its distribution of funds is not an extension of American foreign policy.
A front for US ambitions?
Officially the US nonprofit soft power organization declares its mission is toward the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. City University of Hong Kong political scientist James Sung Lap-kung said despite its lofty and benevolent rhetoric NED was the solution to post-1980s US ambitions to exert greater influence, particularly in Asia. Its development goal was the perfect guise for it to organize conferences and serve as a conduit to fund various academics and activities.
Sung argued NED's grants never come without "conditions". "There is a consensus among the academic community that taking NED money is the same as taking money from the US government, and there is reciprocity required. Grantees are essentially indebted to NED and its policy masters. If someone's been taking the money for years, as in the case of Lee Cheuk-yan, it implies a very close working relationship," he said.
The modus operandi for identifying and funding cooperative assets to influence and exert pressure on local affairs is not unlike the way the CIA operated prior to NED, Sung added.
NED first made its presence known here, in 1985, two years after the organization was founded. It began doling out funds to the HKHRM. It started reaching out to opposition figures sympathetic to its mission, like Martin Lee Chu-ming - who became the recipient of NED's Democracy Award in 1997.
By 2002, the NDI, a NED subsidiary institution, had set up its first field office in Hong Kong.
Over the next five years NDI reached out to and made contacts with several political parties and think tanks. By 2007 it had consolidated its activities, focusing on creating reports through local partners which allowed them to frame debates and public opinion polls on political reform. The debates over the years consistently focused on issues contrary to the city's mandated political reform framework, suggesting unconstitutional reforms such as public nomination.
Noted US government critic and former State Department employee William Blum described NED as a Trojan Horse, set up in the 1980s to "do somewhat overtly, what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades," meddling in the "internal affairs of numerous foreign countries by supplying funds, technical know-how and training".
Chinese University of Hong Kong Emeritus Professor of Sociology Lau Siu-kai characterized NED's activities as foreign interference, despite the foundation's claim to an arm's length relationship with the US State Department.
Lau said American foreign policy increasingly relied on NGOs like NED, opposition political parties, trade unions and religious bodies to aid agencies sympathetic to the US in foreign countries while standing under the banner of "democracy".
A similar US NGO, USAID, was involved in a Cuban spy program, which paid young Cubans to stir dissent under the guise of an HIV prevention workshop, since 2009, and uncovered in early August this year, less than two months before the late September outbreak of "Occupy Central".
"Funded by public money, NED and similar organizations such as USAID function to liaise and assist, to help, educate, train and organize people in other places for the sake of democratic promotion, election monitoring, and sometimes launching protests to promote regime change when governments, even of democratically elected ones, are antagonistic of US strategic interests," Lau said.
"In the Hong Kong context, the aim was not regime change, because the US government could not afford to alienate the central government with so many difficult issues requiring cooperation," Lau said.
The relationship is one of "coopetition". There are always those in the US who will try to restrain or slow down China's inexorable growth. Hong Kong is nationally important despite a gradual decline of its stature, and remains an international finance and communication center. The city's international connections remain key to the Chinese mainland's evolution to super power status, particularly with regard to economic policy.
NED's mandate, aside from evangelizing so-called "democracy", was to make life more difficult for the leadership in Beijing, Lau contended.
