The people of Hong Kong are hardly winning supporters within China. Much is made of the disdain that Hong Kong people have for Chinese mainlanders, but less is mentioned that it is equally true in reverse.

There is a commonly held belief (which I haven't researched and thus don't know if true or not) that they didn't make nearly as much of a ruckus when they were under British colonial rule, when they were de facto second-class citizens. As such, the independence/pro-democracy movement is viewed as a Western-backed attempt to destabilize China, with supporters (generalized to the whole people of Hong Kong, depending on how many of them you believe support the movement) viewed as submissives to the West. (If you add in a racial dimension, where the Hong Kong people are Asians willing to submit to "whites" while fighting back against other Asians, adds to that disdain).

Any attempts to "help", as some on this thread have suggested, is only going to help affirm this belief and harden the mainland Chinese stance against Hong Kong.