It is worth reiterating that the "five demands" at the heart of the Hong Kong protest movement are rather humble. The protest movement began by demanding that the Hong Kong government withdraw a poorly conceived extradition bill that would have seen Hong Kongers extradited to China to stand trial under its opaque legal system. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor used the police force to suppress the protests,
which in turn whatsapp database made the protesters gather their strength and became a mass movement that swept the whole territory. They demanded an investigation into police violence, demanded that the government stop the designation of protests as "riots" (which exposes arrested demonstrators to charges of rioting, punishable by up to 10 years in prison), amnesty for detainees, and Beijing has long promised free elections. These requirements are not radical at all. Opinion polls show they have the support of a decisive majority of Hong Kongers. This weakens the jurisprudence of the CCP’s new National Security Law, that the protest movement represents separatism or even terrorism. In fact, the current crisis in Hong Kong is entirely the product of the authorities'
refusal to engage in addressing the concerns of Hong Kong people, and instead repression. The results could have been quite different. In 1984, Britain and China signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which the two countries agreed that Hong Kong's "way of life would remain unchanged for 50 years" and that Hong Kong residents would eventually elect their own leaders. At the time, many Hong Kong pro-democracy activists expressed deep sympathy for the situation in China and enthusiastically spoke of bringing the values of freedom and progress into China, a desire that was echoed by reformers at the highest levels in China.