>How else do you explain public opposition to the national security law? You can't have your cake and eat it too. Hong Kong benefits immensely from its autonom

>How else do you explain public opposition to the national security law? You can't have your cake and eat it too. Hong Kong benefits immensely from its autonomous position in regards to the Chinese government, so they don't want to disrupt the status quo. The protests have revealed HK to be a national security issue for the Chinese government, so they want to create laws to make sure HK isn't used as a center of political dissent. These two ideas are contradictory with each other, so a law like this was inevitable. >And I'm not sure how Hong Kong's previous autonomy (or any other freedoms) would come at the cost of the PRC's sovereignty? I'm not sure if you understand the original impetus of the extradition bill. Here's a good Twitter thread that details the provisions: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/status/1175020345998245888 https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/status/117502034599824588... To answer your question, if criminals are able to easily escape China into Hong Kong, that fundamentally weakens the justice system. HKers and mainland Chinese move between HK and the mainland constantly. It would obviously be a failure of justice if you could go to a city within your country and encounter the man who killed your daughter. A similar law exists within Puerto Rico, a US territory. This is the bill that originally sparked the protests. Recently Beijing passed the bill we are talking about that also gives them much more power in terms of being able to imprison HKers that try to subvert the government. This can be seen as a response to the protests, whose leaders have been revealed to be funded and supported by foreigners. China's sovereignty is absolutely threatened by protests and riots that seek to destabilize Chinese places of power, like Hong Kong. >As long as it's happening openly, I can't get too upset either way If you can't get upset about the US meddling in Chinese affairs, then you can't get upset about China trying to stop internal subversion. Not to mention, it absolutely doesn't just happen openly. The US has a long history of covert regime change operations. This happens completely undemocratically. Here's a short list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... I mean, just look at the hysteria surrounding Russian involvement in US elections. Rumors of Trump officials meeting with Russian officials has set public discourse on fire for years. And yet, it's unreasonable for China to oppose Demosisto party leaders who have openly met with US officials. I'm not trying to use whataboutism to deflect, I'm trying to paint an equivalency between the situations of these two countries. >where did you develop these beliefs? I'm fairly left leaning. China is a leftist country. I know China isn't perfect, but you can easily rationalize their decisions as being made by a government that cares about its people, not power-mad evil dictators as most people would have you believe. If you're interested in learning more, I would recommend reading Blackshirts & Reds by Michael Parenti. https://mltheory.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/michael-parenti-blackshirts-and-reds_-rational-fascism-and-the-overthrow-of-communism-2001.pdf https://mltheory.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/michael-parenti...