Hong Kong: Anatomy of a pre-planned protest

Through the smoke and fog of violent protests in Hong Kong, one can begin to see clearly how this all started, and toward what end.

Jeff Thomas perhaps says it best when he suggests hidden forces have been funding swarms of protestors from the beginning: "Hundreds of thousands of protestors participate. All of them need to be bussed in and fed…And someone, somewhere, must pay the enormous weekly bill to ensure it's all possible."

So who is funding this—and are better alternatives to protest available?

Funding for the Protests

The dominant pathway for funding this civil unrest is beginning to make itself known. And its trail does not begin in Hong Kong.

What is becoming increasingly clear is the main source of funding for the Hong Kong protestors comes from outside the region and is, more specifically, initiated by Western non-governmental organizations located in Washington DC, California and New York. These NGOs are now believed to be sending funds directly to local Hong Kong university student organizations, which then use the funding to pay for protest training and expenses.

The funding is significant and arrives well before the protest marches begin. And that demonstrates that the protests are not spontaneous but pre-planned. Three large NGOs in particular have contributed not only the core funding but also the pre-planned tactics being used by the protestors: the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Foundation and the Rand Corporation.

Per Alexander Rubinstein and Mnar Muhawesh, writing in separate articles for Mint Press News, the NED has contributed $29 million to Hong Kong since 2014, "according to the NED's own website," Muhawesh says. A great deal of this largesse went directly to university groups. US-based NGO Open Society Foundations, meanwhile, has sent unspecified "dark money" to student groups as reported by Xinmin Evening News. And the "swarm tactics" used in Hong Kong are, to paraphrase regime change strategists John Arguilla and David Ronfeldt of the RAND corporation, war by other means. Protesters use numbers to overwhelm and disrupt their opponents, "instigating regime change through labor strikes, mass street protests, major media agitprop, and whatever else it takes short of military conflict," as writer Stephen Lendman puts it at GlobalResearch.org.

Recipients of the Funding

The record shows from these NGO's the funding is distributed to students groups at four universities, and a few labor unions: Hong Kong University, Hong Kong Polytechnic, City University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

It is within these organizations that training and logistics for protestor actions are finalized and carried out.

The use of students to then enlist thousands of protestors for pay is described by outsiders as a form of "capacity building" taught by NGOs — an innocuous enough term. But in the real world of competition between nations, the phrase "capacity building" is a euphemism for deeply funded training and logistics for the express purpose of conducting civil protests that weaken a competitor, lately with violent outcomes.

Tactics Are Pre-Planned

"Swarm tactics" have been successfully deployed in the past — for example, in US-funded interventions into Libya and Serbia. This technique entails instigating large, out-of-control protests used to destabilize a country so the West can come in to effectuate a "regime change" to a government more to its liking. Two analysts from the Rand Corporation, John Arguilla and David Ronfeldt, recently boasted this is the specific tactic being used in Hong Kong today.

The Ultimate Goal

So why is Hong Kong all that important to the US? It turns out Hong Kong is the one place in China that has the financial infrastructure and contacts to fund the much ballyhooed Belt and Road Initiative. By knocking out Hong Kong, you essentially put a stop to BRI for the foreseeable future. You weaken a competitor.

And so in Hong Kong store windows are smashed in. Many well-travelled streets and most universities have been shut down. Smoke bombs go off at random. Tourists cancel their plans to visit. And the economy is hurting. It is an assault on civil society.

Better Alternatives Are Available

This resort to protest, however, seems particularly unnecessary given that other solutions are available. Henry Litton, former high court judge in Hong Kong, underscores the great advantage of Hong Kong already having in place the arrangement of "one country, two systems." This means instead of protesting, there are two immediate courses of action that are less violent and far more practical.

One would be to "promote an atmosphere in which Beijing will feel comfortable with (‘One Country Two Systems') so it will extend the Basic Law by 50 years or 100 years (so that) democratic norms and values might have a chance to flourish," Litton says.

The second would be for protestors to go hat in hand and lobby the SAR to release a part of its $650 billion foreign currency reserves — "by far the largest in the world" according to Litton —to pay for greatly enhanced public and social services and education.

Litton concludes the current formula is "extremely fragile," and if "unrest continues, it would surely fracture beyond any hope of recall."

Our Responsibility As Critical Thinkers

The reality is once we know Hong Kong citizens are being paid to go out and protest by deep pockets like the National Endowment for Democracy, it is impossible to "unhear" this. We can no longer ignore the fact there are people outside Hong Kong who are funding the protests, that these Western elites have their own goals in promoting them and that their intentions are not democratic in the least.

Their wish is to use their big bucks to deliver more and more civil societies into states of disarray — and thereby bring themselves one step closer to a form of "globalization" that gives them the capacity to control the world.

And so as the US Senate and House "go to committee" to give moral support to protestors in Hong Kong, we must ask why they have failed to do their due diligence and are now blaming Hong Kong and Chinese mainland for protests instigated by NGOs headquartered inside their own country. This is especially important to remember because far more constructive and practical solutions are available right now.

The author is an anthropologist and former lawyer based in San Francisco.

The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of China Daily and China Daily website.