[M]y anxiety is not that this community's autonomy would be usurped by Peking, but that it could be given away bit by bit by some people in Hong Kong. - Chris Patten

As governor, I experienced the vitality of life in a booming and free Asian city, saw routinely the best and worst aspects of human nature, and was made to revisit some of the principles in which I have always believed but to which I had rarely given much thought previously. In the darker hours of occasionally fretful nights I found myself face to face with the moral dimensions of political action to a greater extent than ever before.

Asians [...] put more emphasis on order, stability, hierarchy, family and self-discipline than Westerners do.

Xi Jinping and his court have regarded Hong Kong and Hong Kong's freedoms as an existential problem for them because Hong Kong represents so much of what they dislike.