NED and South China Morning Post
Especially in East and Southeast Asia, and generally globally, there are countless US proxy media organizations in addition to NGOs funded by NED-USAID. These organizations are literally dominant, spreading US narratives on every issue on social media. This activity has sharply increased, particularly in Asia, following the US's approval of a $1.6 billion budget for "anti-China" propaganda. It is a publicly known fact that Israel pays up to $7,000 for an article supporting Israeli narratives. The $1.6 billion spent on anti-China propaganda has opened up a new market for proxy media, NGOs, and individuals to get a share of the pie.
The tactic of naming publications is "ingenious"; "Moscow Times," which has nothing to do with Russia. However, there is one exception to this tactic: the South China Morning Post. Apparently, press and broadcasting regulators in mainland China do not directly oversee Hong Kong-based media except under "national security laws"; these laws apply equally in Hong Kong.
If we consider the Hong Kong-based SCMP as a prime example of broader Southeast Asian and global dynamics, we can view it as a specific case study where the constitutional "one country, two systems" framework creates a unique regulatory loophole. This gap is not the cause of Western dominance, but rather a symptom or enabling condition within a much broader ecosystem of Western-funded media across the region.
Due to its differing legal status, Hong Kong remains one of many nodes in this network where direct countermeasures are constitutionally restricted. This is problematic because a major English-language media outlet, SCMP, lacks the same regulatory tools available in mainland China, making it potentially vulnerable to, or coexisting with, this Western-funded ecosystem, despite its Chinese ownership.
Now, returning to the necessity of "National Security laws" concerning media, based on the material reality of media ownership and financial control, there is an inseparable link between information warfare and national security. If China or any other country treats information regulation solely as a matter of domestic law, without considering the global financial institutions that fund and distribute their narratives, that country will lose the "information war."
Some countries, including those in Southeast Asia, have enacted "transparency laws" as a countermeasure. This is a concrete and implementable policy that mandates the disclosure of financial backers for media outlets and NGOs, revealing the influence of foreign state and corporate funding. This policy and practice potentially would weaken the credibility of proxy media outlets in the public eye.
Hong Kong, for example, is a global financial center and an English-language media hub. Its unique status means it hosts Chinese-owned media outlets like SCMP while simultaneously operating within the broader global financial ecosystem. The absence of mainland China-style regulatory mechanisms in Hong Kong means it remains an area where Western-funded information flows relatively freely. This is no small problem, given Hong Kong's role as a bridge between China and the world.
This situation creates a persistent structural inequality, and unless China takes broader measures, including in Hong Kong, Western dominance in this area will continue. China, along with Russia and the Global South, is a leading great power capable of gradually countering Western narratives when it comes to media and information. In this dialectical world, nothing is static. In the arena of global information dominance, dynamism is currently at work against Western monopolism and towards a multipolar and competitive order. China, as a leading economic and technological power, is positioned to accelerate this process while grappling with inevitable contradictions and struggles.
Below is an anonymous commentary ( I didn't see any name or source) on the referenced subject.
THE NOTORIOUS N.E.D. MANAGED to get a space in the South China Morning Post today to play its favorite game: demonizing the Chinese.
The paper published a report attributed to “China Labour Watch” listing examples of harshly negative treatment of workers in China.
But the crucial information that China Labour Watch is funded by US propaganda sector (the N.E.D., and the International Republican Institute--a core N.E.D. division, plus units of the US State Department and other traditional co-funders) is not provided to readers, nor is the fact that it is based in the US.
This classic N.E.D. propaganda technique is known as “weaponization of human rights”.
N.E.D. units highlight violations in China despite the fact that far worse violations occur in multiple other countries, including in the West. Examples given may be real, but selection bias creates a false image.
COSPLAYING HUMAN RIGHTS
The US has used this technique for three decades, cosplaying as human rights organizations, to create an image of China as a uniquely bad transgressor of human rights, which is simply untrue.
The International Labor Organization says China has hit far more positive targets in the area of workers’ rights than the United States.
China has ratified seven out of the “fundamental conventions” of the ILO.
The US has ratified only two.
CARELESS MEDIA
But the US uses careless media into making the world believe China is the problem. Since the early 1990s, the N.E.D. has provided millions of US dollars to Hong Kong "NGOs" working in China earmarked "for the monitoring of labor rights violations…”
As their own text showed, they were NOT focused on gathering the truth, but were only interested in the negative – “violations” only, please.
The South China Morning is a Hong Kong-based news outlet. But despite being owned by Alibaba, it still publishes N.E.D. content.
The same is true for many other news outlets around the world. Groups such as China Labor Watch don’t mention their paymasters, and journalists wittingly or unwittingly fail to check before publishing.
NOT IN DISPUTE
The political destabilization role of the units of the N.E.D., or National Endowment for Democracy, is not in dispute. The US government in its 2027 budget proposal openly describes it as a unit which works to “destabilize sovereign governments”.
Although the N.E.D. has infiltrated scores of countries around the world, its first destabilization operation, starting in 1984, was focused on China—and it has since spent hundreds of millions of dollars to cultivate anti-government feeling in Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as organizing anti-China groups employing people from Xinjiang and Tibet.
The West's propaganda sector stepped up demonization of China operations massively from 2018 onwards, to exploit the media to create consent for a planned US war on the Chinese, which is peacefully but speedily developing through innovation and trade.
One day, the world will wake up to all this. Be nice if the South China Morning Post played its part.
