They've been so let down by the HK govt that they've just given up all hope. Career sucks, family sucks, home sucks, can't marry cause houses are too expensive, rent is unaffordable so you can't move out, unless you're in the top 20% of your senior class, you can't go to college, it's grim. Most people I know are trying to move.
Unless the societal ills get solved, people will always find another proxy/reason to protest.
I think the current situation is tricky in that the 2 issues are partly conflated in the sense that Hong Kong needs to be careful to not just give the half-democratic colonial leash to China. But that's the extent of it (since Beijing didn't setup that colonial structure), and it's important to not conflate the rest of the issues with it. The institutional/functional half of the legco basically seems like a collection of medieval guilds and I don't see it trying to, or having the financial incentive to resolve societal issues for the bottom of the society anytime soon.
The fight for political reform does seem like the right thing to do but I think the only way to success is to stay extremely focused and framing it as a people vs colonial oligarchy issue rather than a British vs China issue or a woke vs brainwashed wumao issue. And most importantly, to not make it about defending the status quo, where Hong Kong will fall deeper in the hole since it not being able to continue to skim off the top of all China trades like it could during the 80s can't float all boats like it could in the past anymore. If Hong Kong fails to prove that its current political system is an advantage rather than a disadvantage that translates to economic and social wellbeing, Beijing will have little incentive to not scrap its system come 2047. And from the present perspective from the Beijing side, all signs would point to it looking like a disadvantage so far when comparing the relative deltas of urban and rural development and wellbeing vs the mainland. This, of course, ignores the fact that the CCP system will hit a glass ceiling in economic development vs countries with mature judicial systems, checks and balances etc, but that’s a limitation for its future potential rather than a present problem for Hong Kong and mainland.
Yes thing are indeed worse these days under the CCP because a- Hong Kong can no longer do nothing productive and parasitically skim off the top of all China trades, finance and logistics and b- because HK and the CCP did nothing to reform this conservative, wealth monopolizing, oligarchic colonial government structure. The self serving oligarchs who monopolize finance, media, real estate are doing well for themselves by monetizing Hong Kong's ultra neoliberal legal system in sectors like wealth management, real estate, private banking etc but the lives of the common people are getting deeper and deeper in the hole with 20% and increasing poverty. If I were in HK, I'd be protesting too. But it's important to know the reason and not just being religious and saying eagles good communists bad.
A bit stronger than just "isn't against Beijing's interests" - this lets them cast it as a win for Beijing against colonial oppressors. Beijing gets a propaganda win, and doesn't lose a face-off against the protesters.
They can have neither. They have Xi. CCP controls the elections....
The situation is basically like someone kicks down your door and steals your kid. Locks the kid in a cage for 100+ years, and right before giving the kid back to you, puts the kid on a leash (governor/legco dynamic) to market it as 'cage-free'. And right after handing the leash back to you and telling you "don't you mess with how the kid is handled", goes around screaming "oh my god, you're leashing your kid! someone call child protection".
Aspiring political reforms is a noble pursuit which I fully support. But if you want to fight for a novel structure which neither the UK (House of Lords, powerless MEPs) or Hong Kong under British rule or China ever had, you can't get it by moral grandstanding or acting like China owes it to you.
I think these problems will continue to re-occur until this root issue is solved. In the same way how I believe Caesar/Sulla/Gracchi brothers are all symptoms of an underserved common populace by the senate class and where the commoners are constantly ready to be incited into a mob rule when economic interests are not pinning them to vest in the system.
And now the vestigial, oligarchic functional/geographic-split legco voting system and the colonial parallel governorship (aka chief executive)/legislative system is failing the Hong Kong common class with 20% poverty rates and twice the housing to pre-tax median annual income ratio than San Francisco in a monopolistic/unregulated/colonial elite-serving economic framework. And that's without even counting in the half-million class-less filipino/indonesian domestic serfs.
I think their way out of their structural societal problems would be to emphasize the class issue and on decolonializing their governmental and economic framework as soon as possible (which I think part of the protest movement gets, and which isn't against Beijing's interests) or go the Chinese socialism route (since China holds humanity's record on poverty reduction, but the locals will obviously not accept this route). But re-glorifying their colonial past or preserving the status quo (which I find is the mainstream protest ideology) isn't it.
To put it in American terms, I think they need Bernie, not Trump.