This has perplexed me to no end. The straw that broke the camel's back was an extradition treaty being proposed, and not the crushing living conditions that have been worsening over the past two decades.
Sounds like you are a native. curious why you think this is the case outside of the oligarchs owning media. If that's the case i can't see why the CCP is complaining they lost control of the narrative via the press, if they never had it in the first place.
Just like some western opinion that why Chinese people don't fight their government for democracy and free speech, I really can not understand why HK people don't fight oligarchs for goods prices and living house.
Every few years, some protests happen in Hong Kong, None of those protests is aiming to the oligarchs, some people do hate Li, but the most far they can do is ridiculing and complaining.
>If that's the case i can't see why the CCP is complaining they lost control of the narrative via the press, if they never had it in the first place
the CCP attached great importance to propaganda from the beginning (the 1930s). At that time, they do have the advantage of propaganda (compare to the Kuomintang), and now the CCP has lost its ability and skills, the official media of CCP are barely welcome by Chinese, very many young men dislike them. Those years what the CCP propaganda department can do is only to delete and forbidden the contents they dislike, and this usually has the opposite effect - more and more people don't trust them
In some HKer's perspective, they detest how the current administration had been in bed with the oligarchs. In their view, gaining universal suffrage (not only 1 person one vote, but a free nomination) would help with that situation.
This problem is not new - it's an old problem that existed in the colonial state. The definition of a colony is to extract wealth for their masters, so colonial administrations and oligarchs work hand in hand.
Even if one could separate that fight between the administration and the oligarch, there are other structural issues for the administration. HK administration, colonial or SAR, is highly dependent on land leases as its source of income. In it's pursuit of being the "most capitalist city", the tax base is very narrow - income tax is very low, no sales tax, etc... So it is not in HK administration's interest to lower housing prices because that would affect its own budget.
And if one were to temporarily cast aside their own views, and look at the incentive a little, there are other political problems - pro-democrats typically controls the legislature (spare this case of disqualifying a few), but they have no hope of becoming part of the executive council, where the Chief Exec heads, and Beijing has control of the nomination. So there's not a lot of incentive to work well together between the legislature and the executive.
How do you properly fight oligarchs in your country when you don't have control of the government?
Also note that if an opinion is almost perfectly correlated with a nationality, that is a reasonable cue to question its rationality.
He and other oligarchs raise prices and exploit profits from people. HK Gov tried several times to press down house prices (build public rental apartments provided by gov, called 新界东北发展计划 ), all failed. What's the funniest part is, HK GOV plan to dismantle the golf courses for building public apartments, and was stopped by the name of environmental protection, House prices keep high, and riches keep their golf courses.
Who will get the most benefit from those riots? Oligarchs, no competitors can enter Hong Kong again. Li himself is the devil's advocate, those oligarchs make young men can only live in cells, but nobody never is able to fight him like they fight CCP now. In this a City with the 0.539 Gini coefficient, why people hate the government on the other side than rich oligarchs? capital owns media.
That, is the true power and true authority, make people fight for you while you consume them.
All those things happened in Hongkong make me feel desperate about this evil world.
I really hate this, no right, no wrong, no justice, no savior, everyone is just puppet of God.