>>717103767
>Mainland proved them wrong sort of. I mean they still were going to be authoritarian but they just played the frog in a pot approach rather than rolling in tanks as soon as the Queen gave them the keys to the house.
The CCP's original plan was indeed to just assume the absolute power that the Crown's colonial authority had over policymaking in Hong Kong and turn the dial up to 11, quashing any local authority the Cantonese had and looting the city's industry and infrastructure so it could prop up Beijing and Shanghai in its place.

But Governor Chris "Based" Patten (pictured here as the unsung hero of HK97) delegated his power to a democratically elected legislature in Hong Kong just two years before the handover, setting a legal precedent the crypto-Han mongoloids weren't able to overturn due to their agreement with the UK. This, combined with Taiwan's successful transition to fair and free democracy around the same time, was the direct cause of untold seething and coping on the mainland for decades to come.