I originally compared Hong Kong to my understanding of the cities in the middle ages. London and it's citizens were granted special privileges. I thought this

I originally compared Hong Kong to my understanding of the cities in the middle ages. London and it's citizens were granted special privileges. I thought this was a sort of recapitulation of that. That still might be the case but I'm also starting to think this might be bad for the mainland Chinese government. They are fighting ideas about autonomy. The people in Hong Kong don't just want to sit back and make money - they want a say in how the world is run. They want power. That's the idea that's being fought against. If it's China vs. Hong Kong then my money is on China. But what if that alienation between governed and government spreads from Hong Kong to other places in China? It seems unlikely but can the Chinese government respond to that? There's that classic Churchill quote about Democracy (The worst but for all the others) and - if what I've described is accurate - this is one of the places Democracy shines because it's agile enough to concede power as a way of avoiding chaos. More autocratic systems tend to be a lot firmer - they concede nothing by their nature but the prices of firmness is brittleness. If they are finally forced to concede it comes in the form of shattering.