[About Hong Kong:] No other place has quite the same blend of East and West, ancient and modern, spectacular and humdrum. - Chris Patten

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.

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.

[Democracy] is obviously an issue which is hugely important to a new generation [of Hong Kong people].