How I fell out of love with the Hong Kong pan-democrats
December 15, 2025
I SUPPORTED THE so-called pro-democracy party in Hong Kong for many years. I knew the main members personally and happily stuffed my hard-earned cash into their collection boxes.
But I increasingly felt something wasn’t right. Then I did some digging. And then I backed off as fast as I could.
Here’s the story.
A NEW ASSISTANT
As a South China Morning Post reporter in 1991, I noted the rise of a new political group called the United Democrats, who had an “executive assistant” who was always seen at the right hand of the leaders.
His name was Tom Boasberg. So, not Chinese, but American. He was hyper-political, and his previous employer was the United States government.
Many businesses in Hong Kong employed Americans, sure. We all liked Americans. But this wasn’t a business – it was supposedly a “grassroots” political party—and I thought it odd to have a foreigner at the top end of the noisiest political organization in the city.
And when Boasberg moved on in 1992, I noticed that he was replaced by another executive assistant, a woman named Minky Worden. She too was American, she too was hyper-political, and she too was previously employed by the United States government: a coincidence.
When Ms Worden left that role in 1998, the group took an another person in her place: a woman named Emily Bork. She too was American, she too was hyper-political, and she too previously worked for the United States government. A series of coincidences?
(Ms Worden went on to become an enthusiastic player in the Uyghur genocide hoax. Her journalist husband Gordon Crovitz, with whom I worked directly, later went on to sign a contract to work on media monitoring with the Pentagon.)
FACTIONS
For some of this period, I was a Legislative Council columnist for the South China Morning Post.
I lived next door to Yeung Sam, a leading member of the so-called “pro-democracy” party, and soon learned there were factions within it. Everyone’s favorite (including mine) was a rough diamond called Szeto Wah who was noisily patriotic about China while believing that western democracy would be good for Hong Kong. (Yeung himself was unpopular within the organization.)
But many of the other “pro-democracy” politicians, unfortunately, became closely tied in with anti-China groups funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy, which had taken over the CIA’s “soft power” covert regime change duties.
The NED had quietly started funding political parties in Hong Kong in 1990, but kept under the radar, using multiple other identities. Cash arrived in Hong Kong listed as “donations” from a non-existent body called the American Institute for Free Labor Development (set up by the CIA for money transfers).
EXTREMELY DANGEROUS
The NED were and are extremely bad people. Working worldwide, they used the “pro-democracy” label as a cover to poison the public against local candidates who failed to be pro-Washington in any country.
The NED successfully manipulated elections in Nicaragua in 1990 and Mongolia in 1996 and helped to overthrow democratically elected governments in Bulgaria in 1990 and Albania in 1991 and 1992, as intelligence historians noted.
And they would eventually cause chaos in my peaceful, gentle Hong Kong.
The NED did this by using their bottomless funds to blend Hong Kong’s “pro-democracy” politicians with two groups they funded to poison Hong Kong people against mainland China. One was called the Human Rights Monitor and the other was the Confederation of Trade Unions (not to be confused with the HK Federation of Trade Unions, which was a genuine trade union organizing group).
DESTRUCTION OF LEGCO
I lived next door to Yeung Sam, a leading member of the so-called “pro-democracy” party, and soon learned there were factions within it. Everyone’s favorite (including mine) was a rough diamond called Szeto Wah who was noisily patriotic about China while believing that western democracy would be good for Hong Kong. (Yeung himself was unpopular within the organization.)
But many of the other “pro-democracy” politicians, unfortunately, became closely tied in with anti-China groups funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy, which had taken over the CIA’s “soft power” covert regime change duties.
The NED had quietly started funding political parties in Hong Kong in 1990, but kept under the radar, using multiple other identities. Cash arrived in Hong Kong listed as “donations” from a non-existent body called the American Institute for Free Labor Development (set up by the CIA for money transfers).
EXTREMELY DANGEROUS
The NED were and are extremely bad people. Working worldwide, they used the “pro-democracy” label as a cover to poison the public against local candidates who failed to be pro-Washington in any country.
The NED successfully manipulated elections in Nicaragua in 1990 and Mongolia in 1996 and helped to overthrow democratically elected governments in Bulgaria in 1990 and Albania in 1991 and 1992, as intelligence historians noted.
And they would eventually cause chaos in my peaceful, gentle Hong Kong.
The NED did this by using their bottomless funds to blend Hong Kong’s “pro-democracy” politicians with two groups they funded to poison Hong Kong people against mainland China. One was called the Human Rights Monitor and the other was the Confederation of Trade Unions (not to be confused with the HK Federation of Trade Unions, which was a genuine trade union organizing group).
DESTRUCTION OF LEGCO
The “pan-democrats” quickly lost the goodwill of the Hong Kong people by automatically vetoing every act the government did, causing massive delays in a city used to efficiency. Legco became dysfunctional, often grinding to a halt.
The physical violence seen in the Taiwan parliament was transferred to Hong Kong, with people such as Ted Hui throwing foul matter into the parliamentary chamber (and becoming hated by the building’s cleaners).
By 2012, this pro-US movement was working with the Oslo Freedom Foundation (which, despite the name, is based in the US), in a multi-year operation to organize massive demonstrations in Hong Kong with the aim of destabilizing the city.
The US plan was to present these anti-China protests as home-grown “pro-democracy” protests, trusting in the western mainstream media to excuse the horrific violence and hide the US funding. (Which they did.)
A major aim was fearmongering. By forcing Beijing to send the tanks into Hong Kong, Taiwan would abandon its growing friendship with the mainland, and became once again a dependable part of the Pentagon’s First Island Chain.
.
A FAILED OPERATION
The rest is history. The Chinese refused to send in the tanks. The PLA stayed at home. The Hong Kong police managed to quell the riots without killing a single person (unlike in the six other uprisings in the world that same year, all of which led to multiple deaths). The operation failed.
By 2021, many people in Hong Kong knew about the foreign forces involvement and were disgusted with the pan-democrats. My friends and I, almost all of whom had been big fans for many years, became totally disillusioned with western-style democracy.
The western mainstream press rigidly turned their faces away and refused to see any of this.
And today, the China-hostile media, from Reuters’ James Pomfret to the BBC’s Danny Vincent, continue to fail to report the real story. Whether they are hiding it or are genuinely unaware of what is going — that’s not for me to say.
But I will say that the catastrophic loss of trust in the western mainstream media is well deserved.
The physical violence seen in the Taiwan parliament was transferred to Hong Kong, with people such as Ted Hui throwing foul matter into the parliamentary chamber (and becoming hated by the building’s cleaners).
By 2012, this pro-US movement was working with the Oslo Freedom Foundation (which, despite the name, is based in the US), in a multi-year operation to organize massive demonstrations in Hong Kong with the aim of destabilizing the city.
The US plan was to present these anti-China protests as home-grown “pro-democracy” protests, trusting in the western mainstream media to excuse the horrific violence and hide the US funding. (Which they did.)
A major aim was fearmongering. By forcing Beijing to send the tanks into Hong Kong, Taiwan would abandon its growing friendship with the mainland, and became once again a dependable part of the Pentagon’s First Island Chain.
.
A FAILED OPERATION
The rest is history. The Chinese refused to send in the tanks. The PLA stayed at home. The Hong Kong police managed to quell the riots without killing a single person (unlike in the six other uprisings in the world that same year, all of which led to multiple deaths). The operation failed.
By 2021, many people in Hong Kong knew about the foreign forces involvement and were disgusted with the pan-democrats. My friends and I, almost all of whom had been big fans for many years, became totally disillusioned with western-style democracy.
The western mainstream press rigidly turned their faces away and refused to see any of this.
And today, the China-hostile media, from Reuters’ James Pomfret to the BBC’s Danny Vincent, continue to fail to report the real story. Whether they are hiding it or are genuinely unaware of what is going — that’s not for me to say.
But I will say that the catastrophic loss of trust in the western mainstream media is well deserved.
