> a giant golden cage where debt-laden poor people look at exagerated external events and told that at least in America they can starve while speaking out

Making the Chinese population believe that by enduring the deprivation of their freedoms they would obtain a better economic condition is what has brought the Chinese Communists where they are.

Seeing this model exported to Hong Kong is already quite depressing, it’d be better to consider this kind of argument for what it is, at least as far as any western country is concerned.