[av_engr]

I see, you meant true independence as a nation?

Hong Kong has a very complex history and culture about independence. To be brief, majority of Hong Kongers never wanted independence as a country. (It's weird but there was a split of people being pro-China and pro-UK) The thought of Hong Kong independence has been around for long but didn't become major topic and a significant opinion until recent years (after 2014-2016 with rise of figures like Edward Leung).

Historically, China has threaten to "liberate" HK if UK gave Hong Kong any form of independence/progressive democracy. UK also has no intention on instigating conflict with China, especially US was friendly with China in the 60s/70s/80s to fight Soviet. There was an unclassified UK government transcript that backs this information. Ultimately, HKers/Brits/China wanted to maintain the status quo and the final solution was to give HK back to China with some underlying promises (1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration - Basic Law - 1 Country 2 System).

[chrischen]

I mean true Democracy and government and representation by the people.

There’s two way’s to characterize the protests: I don’t like China or I want Democracy.

PRC put strong pressure against Democracy in HK back during British rule, probably because it would set a precedent for after the handover. And despite the last few British governors pushing to increase Democratic processes many efforts for that were stalled by the HK people.

So now that a new governor is in place I fully support movements to increase Democracy, but anything that smells of just an anti-China motivation is just too politically tainted for me to get behind.

[jcytong]

What started as "I want Democracy", which was promised in the Sino-British Joint Declaration signed in 1984[1], slowly was pressured into something different.

As the CCP started to really apply pressure starting in 2014 after the umbrella revolution, HK people have been witnessing the erosion of their rights.

When the CCP labelled the protests as a separatist movement to justify to the West that these were simply "internal affairs/extremist movements", most in HK laughed at the idea of independence. It's CCP's narrative to align their online army and casual observers as anti-China/pro HK independence.

All HK wanted was to enjoy a high degree of autonomy and universal suffrage. Slowly HK people started to realize the CCP would never hold their end of the bargain and truly give democracy to the HK people. So what was CCP's fake news campaign became reality and it's now turning into a HK independence and anti-China campaign.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-British_Joint_Declaration

[av_engr]

I see what you are saying. I think it is hard to separate anti-China and pro-democracy. After all, China is against democracy in the case of HK (Backed by example why universal suffrage legislation was crippled). The question comes down to, how to be pro-democratic but not anti-China, especially when CCP-backed media categorized the entire movement to be separatist....