Question for all the dumb tankies claiming the US is paying the HK protestors. Why wouldn't China just outpay America? Because they've got a "fuck with Hong Kong" budget that is an order of magnitude beyond the pittance that NED gives to a couple of orgs here. https://twitter.com/twtchow/status/1200822387102470144

I mean, if your position is that Hongkongers are just dumb little pawns easily bought, easily led, too stupid to think for ourselves, then why wouldn't China just buy our compliance? Why would they let 176 days of protest happen and then spend $200 million on mere damage control?

I've pointed out before the "omg, HK protests are a NED funded colour revolution" is a stupid (and racist) way of looking at the protests as the NED funding, all listed publicly, is at most $500k USD a year. That's about 4 million HKD. Enough to buy a 150 sq foot studio flat.

Now I'm not a maths expert, and numbers are hard, so I'll need you to help me out here. But isn't $500k USD a year a SMALLER number than the $50 million USD that might be spent on simply retaining some people who were roundly told to jog on in the DC elections?

Claims of foreign funding fall apart when you consider China also has deep pockets, and more of a stake in deciding what happens to Hong Kong. Yet here I am waiting to sell out and not one bastard from the Liasion Office has bothered turning up to tempt me with a suitcase of cash

Eh fuck, those numbers are wrong, it's actually USD $20 million, so $5 million per year. I told you maths was hard. Still literally ten times the NED amount so the point remains extremely valid. And that's money for *just* the DAB people, one of many things they fund.

If I had a dollar for every time I've seen some mouthbreather say "NED funded protests" I'd be able to able to fund the protests myself. Imagine how little that money could buy though, assuming it went into actually paying people and not to the orgs it does.

Let's go with the $2k HKD a fella in TST told me protestors got paid. Enough money to buy a Nintendo Switch. Risking broken bones, tear gas, ten years in prison. All bollocks, but let's go with it.

2000 protestors. The NED money would buy 2000 protestors. Once.

This is day 176.

Here's how the tankie propaganda machine works: they just make shit up.

$29 million dollars sounds like a lot? FORGOT TO SAY THAT'S HONG KONG DOLLARS. Yeah, that works out at less than $4 million USD. Two bucks for everyone on the June 16th march.

https://twitter.com/mqmqqmqm/status/1266920469967626242?s=21 https://twitter.com/mqmqqmqm/status/1266920469967626242

Now you could say you disagree with NED funding going to HK orgs, and fair enough that's a position. But suggesting millions were in the street for literally pennies is some insulting shit. And you know it's an undefendable claim when you have to misrepresent by a factor of 7.

Even China Daily, the site that portrays Hong Kong protestors as cockroaches needing to be exterminated, never exaggerated the numbers like that.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201908/17/WS5d578b28a310cf3e355664f1_2.html

Mind you, that same tankie was recently claiming all HK protestors were middle class rich kids, because that's what their friends here are. So we have Schrodinger's protestors: simultanously rich of their own accord but also poor enough to be bought for, again, literally pennies.

Most of the kids were going up against the cops with cardboard shields. They were skipping meals to be able to afford a decent gas mask once it was clear it was an ongoing affair.

Why can't tankies even just admit Hongkongers have agency, and a sense of self-worth?

Spoiler: you know why. You know.