Yeah, to shift toward a harder grip. HK won't be allowed to be the stronghold, the CCP will be happy to see those dissidents leaving, and the majority of mainland Chinese don't like HK anyway.

IF (a big if) it is really the case that

1. the majority of mainland Chinese don’t like Hong Kong, and

2. the majority of Hong Kong don’t like mainland Chinese,

shouldn’t the two separate, instead of letting CCP grip harder to Hong Kong?

How should this be contrasted with Tiananmen Square? Was that a “shift” towards a more capitalist system?

tiananmen square protests were originally protesting that very transition toward a more capitalist-like system in china and growing anxiety toward it and the communist party’s apparent inability to handle it well; hence the push for democracy (not necessarily the liberal western democracy most would imagine)

[1]http://www.tsquare.tv/links/Walder.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests

in both cases maybe you could say students were protesting what they saw as corruption and a corrupt system and to save what they felt was the ideal that they grew up with (democratic socialism in china, liberal democracy in hongkong)?

[edit] formatting links