LEGAL RISK FOR GROUPS SUPPORTED BY U.S.
National Endowment for Democracy accused in foreign ministry report of funding protests in Hong Kong, as analysts warn Beijing ‘will surely prosecute any body accepting funds in future’
Hong Kong organisations or individuals could risk violating the national security law if they receive support from the US-backed National Endowment for Democracy (NED), analysts have said, after the body was attacked by Beijing in a recent report.
The warning came several days after the scathing document issued by the foreign ministry denounced the organisation for funding the city’s social unrest in 2019 and acting as a “second Central Intelligence Agency”.
The lengthy report, issued on Saturday, accused the NED of “meddling in Hong Kong’s elections and interfering in China’s internal affairs”, among other places, with numerous “examples” of how the organisation “subverted lawful governments and cultivated pro-US puppet forces around the world”.
Several pro-Beijing analysts have said the ministry’s “fact sheet” served as a warning that central authorities had been monitoring all anti-China groups with financial links to the United States and were seeking to discredit any anticipated criticism from Washington regarding Hong Kong’s leadership election last Sunday.
“Under the national security law, it’s collusion to accept funding from bodies like the NED,” said Song Sio-chong, an academic from Shenzhen University’s Centre for Basic Laws of Hong Kong and Macau. “Authorities may not be able to go after disbanded civic groups, but they will surely prosecute any body accepting funds in the future.”
The NED is a bipartisan body funded by the US Congress and it has made no secret of the fact it has worked with different civil groups in Hong Kong over the years, including pro-establishment organisations.
But the latest warning shot by Beijing has sent ripples among the city’s already marginalised opposition and civil rights movements, cutting off another source of funding.
“For sure, the national security law has deterred local civil society groups’ accessibility to international donors,” said one local activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The government could accuse civil society organisations of collusion with foreign forces.”
The 12,000-word document began by accusing the NED of “instigating colour revolutions to subvert state power” in Eastern Europe and Africa since the 1980s, producing disinformation, aiding academic programmes for the purpose of ideological infiltration, and “funding separatist forces to undermine” the stability of countries such as China.
It also accused the NED of colluding with opposition groups to interfere in the city’s elections and China’s internal affairs, while giving “full support to Hong Kong independence” using other forms of rights as a pretext.
“It has long carried out projects on so-called ‘labour rights’, ‘political reform’ and ‘human rights monitoring’ in Hong Kong, and was behind almost all street demonstrations there,” it said.
Citing statistics from Du Jia, a researcher with the Consilium Research Institute of Chongqing University, the ministry’s report said the “NED has funded Hong Kong projects every year since 1994, investing altogether over US$10 million by 2018”.
It also alleged that the NED invested about US$640,000 in various efforts in the city in 2019, “while according to its website, a further US$2 million was spent on 11 Hong Kong-related projects, with a particular focus on disrupting [Legislative Council] elections in 2020”.
The report said prominent opposition groups during the social unrest, including the Civil Human Rights Front, the Demosisto party and the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, all received NED funding. The three have since disbanded.
According to the NED’s website, the body provided Hong Kong with yearly funding of between HK$3.5 million and HK$5 million from 2017 to 2021, except for 2020, when the amount peaked at HK$15.2 million.
Projects that received funds in recent years often involved strengthening human rights and democracy, as well as improving labour rights, with support for initiatives focusing on “freedom of association” and “defending the rule of law” emerging in 2019.
In the following year, the NED said it had funded several initiatives that sought to strengthen political institutions. The projects aimed to help local student groups promote their political messages and build “international solidarity and support for freedom in Hong Kong”.
But the NED’s tally of sponsored initiatives in 2020 was 10, one short of the figure suggested by the ministry’s fact sheet, with just two mentioning the Legco election that year.
Political analyst Sonny Lo Shiu-hing said the report had far-reaching consequences. “It is a stern warning that if local residents or the Hong Kong diaspora link up with these foreign groups, they could be violating the security law,” he said. “It’s also a pre-emptive strike, as Beijing knew that Western countries would criticise Hong Kong’s leadership election”.
The report also said opposition activists Nathan Law Kwunchung, Martin Lee Chu-ming, known as the city’s “father of democracy”, and veteran labour rights advocate Lee Cheuk-yan, saying the trio had attended an NED event in the US in May 2019.
Law, who currently lives in Britain, said the move was a “common tactic” deployed by Beijing to dismiss the aspirations of those seeking democracy for the city. By framing it as foreign intervention, he said, “Beijing can easily suppress our legitimate pursuit in the name of ‘national security’ ”.
The activist said he had attended talks and conferences hosted by universities and think tanks but had not received any financial support from the NED or its affiliated bodies.
The fact sheet also alleged that the NED, in 2016, sponsored pro-independence activists Edward Leung Tin-kei and Ray Wong Toi-yeung to study at the universities of Harvard and Oxford respectively. It also named Johnson Yeung Ching-yin, a former convenor of the now-defunct Civil Human Rights Front, as a participant in an NED visiting fellows programme in 2017.
Leung and Wong were once the faces of Hong Kong’s proindependence movement. Leung was released from prison in January after serving four years over a 2016 riot, while Wong has fled to Germany. Wong said he and Leung had never received money from the NED to pay for their studies, and urged the foreign ministry to “stop making nonsensical accusations”.
The NED and other related bodies have also featured in previous accusations made by proBeijing politicians and media outlets regarding foreign powers pulling the strings for several social movements in the city.
But in November 2014, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, which was funded by the US Congress via the NED, revealed members of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, the city’s biggest pro-establishment party, had also joined its events.
An opposition activist who spoke on condition of anonymity said what the NED provided was no different from exchange programmes offered by Beijing to those from other countries.
“This is normal diplomacy, or in international relations terms, soft power,” he said.
It has long carried out projects on so-called ‘labour rights’, ‘political reform’ and ‘human rights monitoring’
FROM THE REPORT