Would any contact with locals or funding of any organization of any kind that might be sympathetic to the protesters cause be "foreign intervention"?

It seems like this is such a low bar that it would mean that nobody else could associate with people in HK without it declared "foreign intervention".

Let alone that you could declare just about anything "foreign intervention".

I agree partially. The limits of 'acceptable' foreign intervention are not black and white. My feeling, based on what I observe, is that western intelligence services are all over this. Foreign intervention in Syria and Lybia started quietly enough alright through unofficial meetings with opposition groups. It's obvious that many Hongkongese are legitimately concerned about their political and economic future. Foreign money and promises at just the right moment can be wielded to manipulate people that are more or less well intentioned initially.

It's strange the differences in perspective here as with Syria and Libya ... IIRC there was little in the way of any mystery as far as who sided with who and their involvement, yet some folks portray those events as some sort of semi secret war.

Those events have also become the poster child for some regimes to use to warn people about opposing them.

A semi-secret war? Surely a very mysterious war, at least to me because conventional reasoning does not allow me to understand why western governments encouraged putches that destroyed stable governments (imperfect but far, far superior to the alternative) and subsequently armed 'moderate' groups whose morbid ideology differed little from the ideology that we're all supposed to combat ('...right?').

Unfortunately, our press doesn't ask the hard questions. No one is held accountable for the death and destruction that these policies have created. So western governments go on and try to apply the magic formula again. I believe that they are doing the same in HK.