A storm begins with a breeze
Joshua Wong was a 14-year-old middle school student in 2011. In May that year, he founded Scholarism, a student organization that started the massive anti-national education movement the next year. He has devoted himself to political activism ever since.
Scholarism was at the forefront of the Occupy Central campaign in September 2014, during which Wong took on the leadership role by personally urging middle school students to boycott class and calling for the occupation of the Civic Square. The New York Times commented that the legal drinking age was 18 in Hong Kong, yet Wong was already a veteran of dramatic political protests.
Wong is exactly the person the U.S. needs. The U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) gave a temporary grant of 100,000 USD to Joshua Wong through Ye Baoling, a secretary with the Justice and Peace Commission of the HK Catholic Diocese as “activity funds” in November 2012. In March 2014, the U.S. sent another 1,600,000 USD to Joshua Wong through a “Mr. Chen.” The tempting financial benefits and the lofty-sounding excuses of “freedom” and “democracy” were enough to turn Wong into a diehard proxy of foreign forces in Hong Kong and an eager pawn in the plot to oppose China and plunge Hong Kong into turmoil. U.S. proxies, including Wong, were invited to visit the U.S. naval vessel docked in Hong Kong. The slenderly built Wong learned fighting skills from U.S. marines to better “prepare” himself physically and mentally. The NED made a promise to Wong that if he was ever prosecuted by police, he would be arranged to study abroad in the U.S. or the U.K. with full financial support. Although Wong hasn’t made that trip yet, other ringleaders in support of Hong Kong Independence, such as Edward Leung Tin-kei, Alex Chow Yong-kang and Nathan Law Kwun-chung have enrolled in renowned U.S. and U.K. schools in droves this summer.
To call those people “leaders” flatters them. Among the proxies cultivated by the West in Hong Kong, they are merely the “faces” behind which hide deeply concealed figures with more heft and power to cause damage. The West, particularly the U.S., has been furtively scheming and fostering local henchmen in Hong Kong for years. More than 1,000 people in the Consulate General of the United States in Hong Kong and Macau are busy working. The NED, which provides funding to opposition factions in Hong Kong, is busy working. Behind the NED, the CIA, which has an excellent track record of subverting other countries’ sovereignty, is even busier doing its dirty work. Those organizations have orchestrated one tragedy after another in the world. Now, their sights are on Hong Kong.
Wong is now a well-dressed candidate for Hong Kong’s District Councils, his hairstyle changed and his physique fuller. “It seems that the U.S. has fed him well,” commented an Internet user from the Chinese mainland.
The latest addition to the list of color revolutions
Wong’s “rise to fame” paralleled the heyday of the Arab Spring. On Aug. 21, 2011, Scholarism held its first-ever demonstration in Hong Kong. On the same day, rebels in Libya overran Tripoli and overthrew the regime of Gaddafi. When Scholarism was launching the Occupation of the Government Headquarters in late August the next year, former Egyptian president Mubarak was on trial. This uncanny coincidence is significant.
Although Western media call it the Arab Uprising, the Arab Awakening and the Arab Spring, what happened during those years left ordinary people in the Middle East and North Africa with harrowing memories. The damage the upheaval did to the Arab world was no less than that of a full-on regional war, with the repercussions still felt around the areas today. It was so devastating that a tearful Hong Kong girl in front of the camera could only wish for Hong Kong an ending like that of Ukraine, rather than Syria or Yemen.
Of course, what that girl said was influenced by Winter on Fire, a documentary about the “revolution” in Ukraine screened by Hong Kong rioters. Honestly, you cannot watch that film without being impressed by propaganda organizations in the West, which did their best to whitewash such a tragedy. If you know little about what happened, the film could easily reel you in. The West’s capability to do so is an important reason why they were able to incite “color revolutions” around the world.
Ukraine was the first country hit by “color revolutions.” Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, all former Soviet republics became independent states in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Decades later, those countries became the targets of “color revolutions.” The end of the Cold War didn’t stop the West from trying to subvert other countries’ sovereignty. The only difference is that the weapons have evolved from military hardware to the ideals of “democracy, freedom and human rights.” Likely put off by the unsavory ring about the expression “peaceful evolution,” media in the West christened those undermining attempts as “color revolutions.”
The list began: The Rose Revolution breaking out in Georgia in 2003, the Orange Evolution taking place in Ukraine in 2004 and the Tulip Revolution gripping Kyrgyzstan in 2005. The Arab Spring, beginning in 2010, contributed a lot more content to the Wikipedia entry of “color revolution.” Unfortunately, today’s Hong Kong has become the newest addition to that page.
Tricks for “color revolutions”
There is no doubt that internal causes are the main reasons for the drastic changes that happened in those countries themselves. However, it’s not enough to focus only on those countries themselves. It’s obvious that without the intervention of western countries, tragedies in Georgia, Libya or other places would not have been so intense.
As for how to provoke a “color revolution,” the West already has a set of mature theories and rich experience. On a theoretical basis, it starts the nefarious process in the name of “non-violent resistance,” which was proposed by Gene Sharp, the “godfather of the non-violent resistance” and the “Clausewitz in non-violent warfare.” “For us, his book is much more important than nuclear weapons,” said Butkevicius, former minister of national defense of the Republic of Lithuania during the struggle for independence of the three Baltic States in 1991.
On a practical level, the West has summarized its tricks from the “color revolutions.” In early 2011, “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action” went viral on social media. It summarized all Gene Sharp’s “teachings,” just like an exam cheat sheet. Of the 198 methods, 114 have been used in riots in Hong Kong.
Bruce Schneier, a “well-meaning” Internet expert from the U.S., has refined the 198 methods into eight. “Find fractures in social structures, such as social, population or economic issues.” “Plant distorted truth into the factures through embellished stories.” “Cultivate ‘useful fools’ who believe your stories and are easy to be instigated, such as the youth.” Doesn’t work? Don’t worry. Foreign instructors will provide training sessions and even guide you in person on the ground.
Here is the five stages of inciting a “color revolution”:
1 - Start an organized protest campaign;
2 – Fabricate or exaggerate an incident that can cause strong public reaction and lead people to take to the streets;
3 – Mobilize for conflict
4 - Form a political force involving a large number of the ordinary people;
5 - Deliver an ultimatum to the government.
There are other tricks of carrying out a “color revolution”: large-scale protests, public gatherings, music parades, concerts, protest information sharing, collective boycotts, media propaganda, strikes, occupation of public buildings and the setting up of election commissions, among others. What has happened in Hong Kong perfectly matched those stages and tricks.
Organized protest campaign? It’s an open secret that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), both middlemen for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), have provided funds to local political groups, public survey organizations and the so-called human rights organizations in Hong Kong. NED provided over 40 million HKD to opposition groups and figures through Li Zhiying, a member of the “gang of four” destroying law and order in Hong Kong. With such financial support, opposition groups of all stripes were galvanized in their wanton troublemaking. Despite Western media’s claim that the protests are not centrally organized, it’s clear that the riots in Hong Kong cannot be pulled off by a random group of people, but are part of a well-organized campaign.
An incident that can cause strong public reaction? The well-intentioned amendment of the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance was politicized to such an extent that no sensible person could see justification for such violent opposition. The same people making political hay with the extradition bill have never stopped stoking conflicts. Over the past two years, they tried and failed to gain from issues such as allowing mainland police to operate in the West Kowloon station, disqualification of Hong Kong lawmakers and the National Anthem law. The “Fishball Revolution” incited by Edward Leung Tin-kei during the Spring Festival of 2016 would be no different to the “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia, which was caused by a vendor burning himself to death, if it were not effectively dealt with by the authorities.
Other similarities include publicity products packed with lies, wide use of social media and empty yet provocative slogans. There is nothing new under the sun. The go-to tricks of instigators of “color revolutions” remain the same. On the evening of Aug. 25, the picture of “a protester kneeling down to Hong Kong police” went viral on Western media and social media platforms. The truth is that several policemen were forced to draw their guns in self-defense when they were attacked by rioters. The kneeling man was throwing bricks at police officers just moments before playing innocent. No wonder netizens in the Chinese mainland quipped that kneeling in front of police must be in the “color revolution” textbook.
The hidden hand from the other side of the ocean
The biggest common denominator between the Hong Kong version of the color revolution and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine or the Rose Revolution in Georgia is the hidden hand of the United States. As the Russian television network RT has pointed out on its website, if the scale and atmosphere of Hong Kong’s protests and the show of support from U.S. diplomats are not evidence enough, it seems that the misgivings Washington has shown prove the protests and demonstrations in Hong Kong are indeed another color revolution.
Out of guilty conscience or not, the defense from the U.S. are in a “self-deprecating” tone. The U.S. Department of State explains why Julie Eadeh, the political unit chief of the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong, met with Joshua Wong and Nathan Law by saying “That’s just what diplomats do on a daily basis around the world.” John Ross, former director of economic and business policy for the Mayor of London, commented on that remark, saying if Chinese diplomats met with leaders of riots in the U.S. when the U.S. was convulsed by those riots, the U.S. government would surely accuse China of interfering in its internal affairs and call it a total scandal.
It might be true that Joshua Wong doesn’t care that much for Julie Eadeh, as he flew to Germany and was received by Heiko Maas, Germany’s minister of foreign affairs one month after his “secret hotel meeting” with her, and then attending U.S. Congress hearings with Denis Ho. For Wong, the U.S. didn't feel strange at all. From 2015 to 2017, he came to Washington D.C. every year on lobbying trips. For example, he attended a hearing in May 2017, along with Martin Lee Chu-ming, a “senior member” of Hong Kong’s opposition camp, No. 2 in the “gang of poisonous four” in HK, and the founding chairman of the Democratic Party of Hong Kong. It’s ironically fitting for the one older clown to pass onto the other the “legacy” of selling out Hong Kong and betraying their own country in front of the U.S. Congress.
Joshua Wong wrote to the New York Times the day after the hearing that to protect what made Hong Kong unique was in line with Washington’s interest.
Washington’s interests might be the only thing on the mind of Wong and his peers in bringing chaos to Hong Kong.
How Pandora's Box was opened
On June 17, 2019, Joshua Wong was released. Before that, he had been jailed for two months for contempt of court by obstructing the clearance during the 2014 Occupy Central protests. He said that when he watched in prison footage of more recent demonstrations in Hong Kong on TV, he was wondering why the Occupy Central protests five years ago was on still being broadcast. Demosistō announced that Wong would "soon return" to join the extradition bill protests. He is in the spotlight once again: for a 23-year-old young man who had suffered from dyslexia and only scored 19 points in the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination, he is now on the pinnacle of his life.
On June 8, nine days before Joshua Wong was released, Jimmy Lai's Apple Daily posted three micro-films titled "Trilogy of Extradition Bill" on YouTube. The purely fictional stories have at their heart carefully crafted lies: everyone might be "taken to the mainland and sentenced to death;" this is the "last fight." The three videos got more than 1.6 million views, and these “processed stories" was planted into the fractures in Hong Kong’s social structure.
The day after the videos were released, the massive so-called anti-extradition bill protest led by the opposition took place, and the Pandora’s Box of "color revolution," which had been lying in wait for a long time, was finally opened.
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