'I'm going nowhere': 'Loud American' Mark Simon vows to stay in Hong Kong
Jimmy Lai’s right-hand man has moved his family back to the US amid safety fears during Occupy Central after his address was published online - but says he is staying put
Beijing has often accused “foreign forces” of trying to destabilise Hong Kong during the current pro-democracy protests, with a garrulous expat American emerging as a key target of attack.
Mark Simon, the right-hand man of pro-democracy newspaper magnate Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, has moved his family out of Hong Kong for safety and has been pressed to deny that he is a US spy.
But Simon insists he will not let a “relentless smear campaign” force him out of his home in the city and he still has plenty of stomach for the fight.
Large, loud and avowedly Republican, the 50-year-old has been portrayed across pro-Beijing media as a CIA agent – a charge also thrown at student protest leader Joshua Wong Chi-fung and independent academic pollster, Robert Chung Tiny-yiu.
He’s also a proud Catholic – something that links him to Lai and many other prominent figures in the Hong Kong democracy struggle.
Simon described Lai as an instinctive backer of underdogs rather than an “egotist” who believes that he will single-handedly change China.