The US State Department’s power grabbing agency, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is spending HK$4.036 million to infiltrate Hong Kong’s social fabric this year, according to its 2025 annual report.
But it could have been more had it not been for the intervention of Tesla billionaire Elon Musk. In February last year President Trump appointed Musk to look into wastage in his administration with a new government Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk immediately took aim at USAID, the umbrella agency for NED, which he criticized as “rife with corruption” and an “evil organization that needs to be dissolved.” He also described it as a scam.
NED went into a tailspin and immediately suspended all payments to its benefactors, causing them to lay off staff and cut expenditures.
In March, NED filed a lawsuit against the US government and was granted an injunction to allow access to the HK$743 million of its previously approved funds for 2025.
However, the allocation of funds for 2025 is still short of $78 million compared to 2024 budget.
The allocation to Hong Kong includes HK$782,000 to build international solidarity for defending freedoms and the rule of law, inform international stakeholders about regional political deterioration, advocate for strategic responses through legal mechanisms, and expand its international network of supporters through outreach and media engagement.
Another HK$2.34 million is reserved to build a civil society capacity to monitor government and counter censorship of official records and democratic narratives, the organization will conduct workshops training groups and individuals in using digitally secure methods for collecting and archiving materials related to government accountability for human rights violations and preserving the historical record. And it would provide support to political prisoners and those at-risk.
It is also spending HK$907,400 to strengthen the resilience of human rights defenders and their families, foster solidarity networks and conduct community-building campaigns.
The NED annual reports once named its beneficiaries who carried out subversive acts in various countries, but the practice stopped around 2011 (riots in Hong Kong) and now the recipients of the NED handouts are hidden in a cloud of secrecy.
China is the main recipient of NED’s attacks. It said in its latest report that China continued to keep an iron grip on politics and freedoms at home while seeking to solidify its growing influence globally.
It claims that “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) escalated its repression in Hong Kong, Tibet, and East Turkestan, while exporting its model of digital censorship, transnational repression, and elite capture to neighboring countries and farther abroad.” The report further says that “NED-supported partners worked to expose CCP influence, expand independent information channels, and defend civic space.”
Looking ahead, in 2026 the NED will continue to invest most heavily in Asia, even as its most significant growth in grant making occurs in Latin America and the Caribbean. China-related programs—spanning the Mainland, Tibet, East Turkestan, Hong Kong, and China’s global influence— will remain its single largest area of investment.
“When countries can resist foreign authoritarian pressure, they become stronger partners for the United States,” the report boasts.
The first sentence in NED’s 2025 annual report is a lie that NED is a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to advancing freedom and democracy worldwide. As part of the US’s Department of State drawing on public funds, it is hardly private and as for advancing freedom and democracy worldwide, NED is hellbent crippling regimes it doesn’t like in pursuit of world supremacy.
Mark Pinkstone
** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **
While the Washington Post continues to lambast Hong Kong over its National Security Law (NSL), saying recent changes “will chill foreign investment”, the city still enjoys its high ranking in the World Competitive Yearbook (WCY) 2026, a survey undertaken by the International Institute for Management Development.
Hong Kong's global competitiveness has risen for the third consecutive year, up one place to second globally this year, the highest since 2019. It is second only to Singapore and two ranks above Taiwan. The US ranked 10th, 8 points behind Hong Kong.
Among the four competitiveness factors in the WCY 2026, Hong Kong ranks second globally in "government efficiency" and third in "business efficiency". Hong Kong ranks eighth and 11th globally in "infrastructure" and "economic performance" respectively. As regards the various competitiveness sub-factors, Hong Kong tops the rankings in "tax policy" and "business legislation"; ranks second globally in "finance"; third globally in "international trade", "international investment", "management practices" and "education"; and fourth globally in "public finance" and "basic infrastructure".
The Washington Post’s recent commentary on Hong Kong said, “the city’s hardline authorities are making the [NSL] law even more repressive for anyone caught in its net”, that Hong Kong had become “a less secure place to visit or do business” and that the changes “will further chill foreign investment”.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The Hong Kong government said the commentary had exposed the newspaper’s “irrational anti-China stance” and amounted to “wanton slander” and “groundless allegations”.
It is time for the Post to face facts and respect the truth, including honest opinions expressed by its fellow countrymen who invest their money and do business in and with Hong Kong.
The government spokesperson said that, amid rapidly evolving geopolitical dynamics, Hong Kong, with its close connectivity to both the Chinese mainland and the world under the 'one country, two systems' principle, and its sound institutions, open markets and sustained investments in innovation, has become a 'value hub' that offers both security and growth opportunities. In fact, Hong Kong continues to excel in various international rankings including those for economy, finance, and talent.
The International Monetary Fund has also given positive recognition to Hong Kong in recent months, and major credit rating agencies have successively reaffirmed Hong Kong's credit ratings and 'stable' outlook. All these echo the WCY 2026 results.
Even the American Chamber of Commerce here ridiculed the Post by citing an AmCham survey showing increased confidence in the city’s business environment and rule of law.
Last year, Hong Kong knocked Switzerland off its perch for the top spot as the world’s largest cross-border wealth hub while it reclaimed the global initial public offering (IPO) crown for the first time since 2019, with 114 listings raising HK$292 billion. And this year accounting giant Deloitte has estimated that Hong Kong's (IPO) market in the first half of this year had come in second globally, with 78 new listings raising around HK$203.3 billion still with half a year to go.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq claimed the crown for most IPOs after seeing 60 new listings raise HK$872.4 billion during the period, though Deloitte said the stand out performance by the US bourse was largely boosted by SpaceX which alone raised HK$675.8 billion. Without SpaceX's IPO, Hong Kong's stock exchange could have "narrowly surpassed" the Nasdaq to top the world.
The Post is hardly in a position to criticize Hong Kong and should clean up its own backyard before doing so. The troubled Post has been plagued with financial and staff problems in recent years. Staffers also became worried about the CEO and publisher William Lewis’ drinking and uninvolved role in the newsroom. The publisher continued to grapple with declining revenue and readership and sought strategies to regain subscribers lost during the Trump era. In January 2025, the Post announced it will lay off 4 per cent of its staff.
In February 2025, trillionaire wannbe and owner Jeff Bezos announced that the opinion section of the Post would publish only pieces that support "personal liberties and free markets". Within two days of the announcement, it was reported that more than 75,000 digital subscribers had canceled their subscriptions.
As an illustration of its editorial intrusions, the Post editorial board had drafted an endorsement for Kamala Harris for the 2024 presidential elections, but it had been blocked by order of Bezos. The move was criticized by former executive editor Martin Baron, who considered it "disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage", and suggested that Bezos was fearing retaliation from US President Donald Trump that could impact Bezos's other businesses.
The Post is “dying in darkness.”
