'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.
I am not going to let a bunch of jackass commies impose things on me
Simon described Lai as an instinctive backer of underdogs rather than an “egotist” who believes that he will single-handedly change China.