Right. And since it's all about the dogma of Hong Kong these days, no one spends another analytical moment beyond dogma to look at the fact that Hong Kong 'press' is a monopoly too [1][2]. And such is the political nature of the 2 tiered colonial society whether it's in Ecuador or Chile or South Vietnam. An imperial unelected governor (now chief executive) together with a small group of elite ruling families (who control the functional half of the legco), each overseeing a monopolized industry, dominates the political discourse and wealth. Hong Kong never had their populist leader like Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew to decolonialize and socialize their society. And it's not for lack of trying. The first chief executive made a whole bunch of attempts to reform the Hong Kong's economy (which can no longer just skim off the top of all China trade like it could for the past decades). Productive sectors like digital park, silicon park, medicine parks were all turned down. The colonial oligarchy instead turned inwards to monetize their unregulated political and legal systems, focusing on elite sectors like private banking, wealth management, real estate etc which does nothing for the common people and the youth where poverty rate is 20% and cost of housing per median annual income is double that of San Francisco.

An extradition system strikes right at the heart of the private bankers' clienteles but the moment the popular protest starts turning towards societal or class problems like the lack of housing and breaking their House of Lords++, a _single_ tycoon bought out all the newspapers' front pages urging restraint for the protest [3].

[1] https://beta.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myth... [2] https://chinaworker.info/en/2013/10/21/4789/ [3] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Hong-Kong-protests/Hong-Ko...