Background Notes on British Empire-Associated Subversion against China in Hong Kong

Aug. 15, 2019 (EIRNS)—The following are background notes on some of the obvious features of British Empire-orchestrated subversion operations in Hong Kong:

(1) The chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Tugendhat provoked Chinese Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming’s warnings about the British colonialist mindset on Aug. 15, by proposing that U.K. citizenship be extended to Hong Kong Chinese. Tom Tugendhat MBE, a member of the Conservative Party, was a British military intelligence operative before running for Parliament. Among his recent actions: He has characterized last year’s poisoning hoax of Russians Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury as an act of war against Britain, and otherwise smeared the British law firm Linklaters for its work on the initial public offering of the Russian company EN+.

(2) The players in the uprising in Hong Kong are the same as those that participated in similar uprisings there in 2014—the Occupy Movement, or Umbrella Movement. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has, as we have reported, funded and trained key people in the NGOs involved in both events which involved mass mobilizations of teenagers and young people.

Chris Patten, the last British Governor and Commander in Chief, wrote in 2014 that under Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the U.K. had the responsibility to intervene in Hong Kong any time the “the Hong Kong way of life was threatened” for 50 years from 1997, referring to the 1984 Sino-British declaration.

Jimmy Lai, a multi-billionaire owner of Hong Kong and Taiwan tabloids has played an oversized role in both uprisings. It was Lai’s meetings with Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo in July 2019 which created new rifts in U.S.-China relationships.  Lai’s newspapers mirror the British tabloids and have constantly agitated for independence from China. Intercepted emails of Mark Simon, Lai’s right-hand man, reveal a Pentagon background, an internship at the CIA, and a family history at the CIA, although Simon swears he is not a spy. The South China Morning Post revealed on Aug. 11, 2014 that Lai, Paul Wolfowitz, and Simon met on a yacht in Hong Kong harbor to plan the 2014 uprisings. Lai’s entire background remains to be filled out, but he is a hero of the U.S. right-wing libertarian crowd, boasting of personal friendships with Milton Friedman and Gary Becker.  He was also the subject of heroic treatment in a film by the British-oriented Acton Institute in the U.S. in 2008. (See Mike Billington, “Color Revolution: Britain Targets China through Hong Kong,” EIR, Oct. 10, 2014.)

(3) As usual, the Congressional Executive Commission on China is playing an outsize role, putting pressure on President Trump to get tough or else. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) have legislation pending to sanction Chinese officials for failures to preserve human rights in Hong Kong—legislation specifically referred to by Hong Kong protesters waving American flags and singing the U.S. national anthem. Videos of the flag-waving dissidents are being widely circulated in Trump social media circles.