The events playing out in Hong Kong are being attributed to outside forces by China, a revelation which startlingly has a similar character in the form of foreign meddling in the country.

Mainland Chinese media had pointed to the suspected Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) front, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), for fomenting discord in the special autonomous region of China in which the rallies prominently display the American stars and stripes and the British Union Jack.

“The ideologues in Western governments never cease in their efforts to engineer unrest against governments that are not to their liking, even though their actions have caused misery and chaos in country after country in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Now they are trying the same trick in China,” mainstream broadsheet China Daily wrote.

Analysts in China also linked the escalating demonstrations to the US trade war and “military encirclement of China,” in which they said 400 or half ​of the 800 US overseas military bases surround China.

Encouraging the demonstrations go hand-in-hand with international efforts to bar Huawei 5G technology, the cancelation of a joint study on cancer and the arrest of Chinese corporate officers.

All these acts were designed to exert maximum pressure on China.

During the term of the rabidly pro-American Noynoy Aquino, the US government announced a rebalancing of forces to the Asia-Pacific, which came to be known as the Asian pivot policy in which the Philippines plays a crucial role in providing the bases for launching and maintaining American forces in the region.

Shortly after President Rody Duterte launched his vitriol against the Americans and threatened to evict all their forces from the country, the Marawi City siege happened. In 23 May 2017, a surprisingly organized and heavily-armed extremist group professing allegiance to the Islamic State occupied the only predominantly Muslim city in the country.

The campaign to unseat Rody and the terror Marawi City invasion were believed parts of efforts to shape policies and events in the fast-developing Asian region.

In a paper, independent think tank Center for Research on Globalization based in Quebec, Canada claimed to have found proof of interference in the domestic affairs of other nations around the world, funded and directed by Washington DC.

The report stated “interlocked, deeply rooted and heavily financed network of American-backed agitators and propagandists, operating behind the cloaks of journalism and rights advocacy not only in the Philippines but across Southeast Asia.”

These highly-funded organizations work “to upend local, independent political institutions and replace them with a system created by and serving exclusively the interests in Washington that created them.”

It tagged the NED as providing grants to Rappler, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility and the Vera Files.

Pressure on the Philippines through US-funded media is only one of several fronts the US is using to transform, direct and determine the future of the country as a nation.

The US also places direct political pressure on Manila to cooperate in confronting Beijing over the South China Sea, according to the report.

It attempted “to use Saudi-funded terrorism in the Philippines’ south as a vector to reintroduce a significant and expanding US military presence across the archipelago nation,” according to the report.

Thomas even suggested that the siege may have been the laboratory for the same tactic to be employed in other parts of the region.

The use of terrorism to exert pressure points against Southeast Asian states and as a pretext for a US military presence is a tactic the US has attempted several times, and so is the use of NED-funded organizations operating under the guise of independent journalism or rights advocacy.

The tagged news organizations have been active in anti-Duterte propaganda which are disguised as news stories and they act as conduit for the yellow mob in launching campaigns against the President, such as the filing of a “crime against humanity” complaint against Rody in the International Criminal Court.

Allen Weinstein, a founder of the NED, told the Washington Post in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

The NED funds coordinate and weaponize non-governmental organizations and social organizations to have the capability to launch protest movements such as putting tens of thousands of rallying youths on the streets of Hong Kong. The NED also bankrolls groups that coordinate the demonstrations.

The recent actions of the administration of US President Donald Trump were also an admission of the powerful influence of the NED by cutting its budget while limiting its connections with government agencies including the CIA.

President Ronald Reagan established the program in 1983, following years of scandals that tarnished the CIA. Soon NED took over many of the tasks that the CIA used to perform. When the United States wanted to interfere in the Italian election of 1948, the CIA did the job. Decades later, when Washington sought to push its favored candidate into the presidency of Nicaragua, it was through the NED.

American influence on the country has been radically reduced after the election of Rody, and that was the time that Rappler and the other yellow media appear to have found a cornucopia of financing as long as they work on weakening the popular support of Rody.

Such efforts failed but the anti-Duterte money is still flowing.