Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests
I think a lot of people who were born in the west don't understand that, when you're very poor, economic circumstances matter more than political freedom.  After all, having money (or not) affects what you can or cannot do far more than whoever's in charge.<p>Chinese people today have lived through an economic miracle.  If I lived there I doubt I'd criticize their system, especially considering people still can remember worse times.  For young Hong Kongers however, they didn't live during British rule.  They were born into wealth, and now their own career prospects (like many millenials around the world) aren't great.  So they protest.<p>The unfortunate thing is that they'll fail.  The finance industry is already planning to exit HK (too volatile), and China can kill the rest of their economy.  Rich HKers will leave.  In the end, the protests will only hurt HK.<p>Occupy Wall Street didn't do anything, successive Ukrainian revolutions never lasted either.  Ukraine is often cited: after the Orange Revolution, Yanukovych eventually came back to power.  Poroshenko had his time, but lost in the biggest landslide in Ukraine's short history.  Now Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe, they're not in the EU, they're not in Nato, they lost Crimea, Donbass is at war, and while Zelensky can't possibly be any worse, there's no clear sign things will get better.