by Shao Xia
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), often dubbed "the second CIA," recently released a report on China and Russia, which was riddled with lies, fallacies and disinformation, deliberately fabricated to smear China's foreign policy and international cooperation.
While NED styles itself a "non-governmental organization," its track record shows that all it does is to attack and vilify other countries, mislead international opinion, and stoke bloc confrontation. In a recent article for Izvestia, Sergei Shoigu, secretary of Russia's Security Council, noted that Western NGOs have played a special role in "color revolutions" -- organizationally and financially linked to foreign and intelligence services of the United States and its allies, they are tasked to monitor and destabilize domestic politics in relevant countries, shape strategies of pressure that create "information noises," and recruit and train participants in protest movements.
At the beginning of this year, NED released its "2025 Annual Report," which said NED funded more than 1,900 projects across over 90 countries in that year, disbursing as much as 271 million U.S. dollars, with China, Russia, Iran and Cuba being the core targets. Not just in 2025 -- since its founding in 1983, NED has never stopped pouring money into mischief. Carl Gershman, then president of NED, explicitly stated in his Congressional testimony in 2018 that NED's job is to "empower" people like political activists and give them "tools" to "advance American values and security around the world."
First, it operates a "color revolution" supply chain. Over more than 40 years, NED has developed a standardized playbook for fomenting "color revolutions" worldwide: bankrolling opposition groups, pro-Western media, NGOs and dissidents; exploiting local social tensions; fanning public animosity; steering public opinion; and engineering street-level confrontations.
Its fingerprints can be found in numerous political upheavals -- from its heavy backing of Poland's Solidarity Movement during the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, to funneling huge sums to the opposition during Serbia's "Bulldozer Revolution" in 2000; from masterminding Georgia's "Rose Revolution," to bankrolling Ukraine's opposition during the "Orange Revolution"; from exploiting social media to incite nationwide unrest during the Middle East's "Arab Spring," to funding overseas media to churn out mass disinformation during Iran's domestic turmoil.
Second, it works to undermine global cooperation. As the world trends toward mutually beneficial cooperation and greater interconnectivity, NED views cooperation among Global South countries as a threat, and manipulates think tanks, media and civic groups to wreck it.
NED has funded negative reports that distort the nature of infrastructure cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, while interfering in host countries' economic policies and trade agendas in Latin America and Africa. It has also peddled bloc-confrontation rhetoric regarding emerging multilateral mechanisms such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in a bid to undermine Global South solidarity and maintain America's dominance.
Third, it orchestrates infiltration and subversion against China. NED's 2025 Annual Report shows it poured more than 53 million dollars into Asia in that year, over 13 million dollars of which was earmarked for China-related projects -- the largest sum for any single country worldwide. Most of that money went to separatist activities aimed at undermining China's development and stability.
It was NED that funded and trained rioters during Hong Kong's 2019 legislative amendment unrest, instigating them to escalate street "resistance." It is NED that has colluded with Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party authorities to stir up confrontation across the Taiwan Strait on the pretext of "democracy."
It has long funded the so-called "independent media," "independent think tanks" and extreme anti-China groups both inside and outside China, and has cultivated "opinion leaders" and social-media influencers as proxies to incite social grievances and manufacture disinformation about China to smear the country and mislead public opinion. These actions have gone well beyond the bounds of civic exchange, and their real purpose is to undermine China's sovereignty and security and damage its core interests.
American officials have repeatedly stated that they hope to usher in the best-ever chapter in U.S.-China relations and make contributions to both countries and the world. But the question is: will the "white glove" lurking behind the scenes rein in its overreaching hand? Will it truly learn to respect the international rules it has so freely trampled? Only time will tell. But as long as the Chinese people see through its true colors and stay vigilant against it, none of NED's schemes or operations will ever succeed on this soil.
Editor's note: Shao Xia is a commentator on international affairs, writing regularly for Xinhua News Agency, the Global Times, China Daily, CGTN, etc.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Xinhua.
