T HERE IS SOMETHING depressing about the Chinese government’s claim that foreign “black hands” are behind the protests in Hong Kong. For the claim is both nonsensical and, in mainland China, widely believed. It is a fresh lesson in the power of disinformation to see decent, patriotic Chinese sharing tales of the CIA paying gullible Hong Kongers to join marches or smuggling in foreign rioters on late-night flights (a rumour sourced to a driver at Hong Kong airport, in the version that Chaguan heard).

There is something positively alarming about signs that, at some level, Communist Party bosses believe the black-hands story. Neither evidence nor common sense supports the tale’s central charge that outsiders tricked or provoked as many as 2m Hong Kongers into joining marches. The accusations began while the protesters were still overwhelmingly peaceful, focused on a planned law that would send suspects from their city’s Western-style justice system into Communist-controlled mainland courts. To propagandists in Beijing, no free will has been marshalling those students and pensioners, doctors in hospital scrubs and black-suited lawyers, off-duty civil servants and parents with pushchairs. Instead the protesters are at best dupes, and at worst foreigner-loving race traitors, ashamed of being Chinese.

The drumbeat has intensified as the demonstrations have grown more violent. Police and at least one mainland reporter have endured beatings by young radicals gripped by nihilistic rage. To objective analysts, the causes include protesters’ paranoia after days of police infiltration and brutality, and the lack of any further concessions by the government as rewards for pragmatism other than the shelving of the extradition bill. But grim-faced government spokesmen in Hong Kong and Beijing have another explanation. They accuse foreign forces, meaning America, of fomenting a Ukraine-style “colour revolution” to keep a rising China down.

In late July Tung Chee-hwa, a shipping magnate and Hong Kong’s first chief executive under Chinese rule, called the “well-organised” protests evidence of “masterminds behind the storm”, with “various signs” pointing to America and Taiwan. Communist-controlled newspapers have made much of the handful of protesters who insist on carrying American and colonial-era Hong Kong flags on marches (which is arguably more foolish than sinister). They have shared images of a “foreign commander” directing protests by smartphone, who turned out to be a New York Times journalist texting colleagues. They have also published photographs of a meeting between pro-democracy leaders and Julie Eadeh, a diplomat at America’s consulate whose job is to talk to local politicians. One such newspaper, Takungpao, called Ms Eadeh “a person of mysterious status and an expert in low-key acts of subversion”. Given that Ms Eadeh met Hong Kong’s most famous democracy activists in a hotel lobby in broad daylight, either the tradecraft of American super-spies is slipping, or the party’s media define the term “mysterious” pretty loosely.

Those accusing America of funding revolution in Hong Kong must also grapple with some logical objections. For one thing, the protests do not need much funding. Ordinary Hong Kongers have donated spare T -shirts to replace clothes soaked in pepper spray, and money to buy hard hats, face masks and McDonald’s vouchers for hungry youngsters. For another, stability and the status quo in Hong Kong serve American interests profitably and well. More American businesses operate in Hong Kong today than in 1997, when British colonial rule ended. Some of America’s largest corporations rely on the city’s open markets, transparent legal system, uncensored internet, modern transport links and business-friendly governance as they access China’s vast markets. It is true that congressional leaders have urged rulers in Beijing to avoid sending in troops to crush protests, and that senior American officials have recently hosted pro-democracy Hong Kongers. But America’s long-standing policy has been to lobby China to preserve the territory’s freedoms, not to seek a democratic revolution. As for President Donald Trump, he has dubbed the protests “riots”—the term used by Chinese officials—and said he has “ZERO doubt” that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, can “humanely solve the Hong Kong problem.”

The world seen from Beijing: greedy, hypocritical and cruel

There are reasons why propagandists peddle the black-hands myth. For one thing, it works. After initially censoring news from Hong Kong, official outlets are full of videos showing protesters attacking police or hurling petrol bombs, over captions calling them splittists who want formal independence from China (in reality, a fringe position in Hong Kong). Many ordinary folk have heard little about the extradition law that sparked the protests. Chinese opinion is hardly monolithic, but it is not hard to find netizens impatient to see snooty, ungrateful Hong Kongers crushed.

Most worrying, China’s rulers are betraying a bleak and cynical worldview in which might is right and the big always dominate the small. To them, it is not conceivable that 7.3m Hong Kongers could believe that their individual, universal rights trump the will of 1.4bn compatriots. If tiny Hong Kong is defying its mighty Motherland, another great power must be egging it on.

When the British government defends Hong Kong’s freedoms, Chinese officials are sure that Britain is still sulking about its loss of empire—and will pipe down once Brexit renders it friendless. Other Western envoys in Beijing have been lectured that their support for Hong Kong must be part of a concerted push by American hawks to hurt China. Suggest that Western countries might occasionally be guided by principle and Chinese officials scoff.

Their cynicism is self-serving, of course, as it handily shifts blame for the mistrust the party inspires in Hong Kong. But it also clouds China’s vision of the world at a perilous moment. Some propaganda is laughable and tragic at the same time. ■