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The last one. There's no stopping these activites in Hong Kong. (for the moment)

It is becoming very clear however, that a serious crackdown from Beijing is coming. Not on this particular incident, but in general on the political freedom in Hong Kong. It is becoming undeniable China demanded Hong Kong back in order to destroy it.

But when it will arrive. Good question.

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China's economic growth in the last couple of decades has in a way been terrible for the long-term future of Hong Kong. When Hong Kong was transferred from the British to the Chinese, there was some question about whether you could have the prosperity of a market economy without the political freedom of a democracy. I'd imagine China was hesitant to mess too much with Hong Kong in fear of killing its economy. But it turns out that you can have markets without democracy; you need the rule of law but it doesn't matter if people get to vote on the government that makes the laws. That eliminates the long-term incentive to maintain Hong Kong as a separate system.

This is not exactly correct. HK has pretty solid rule of law and has a Basic Law that guarantees freedom of speech. Beijing cannot interfere directly and activists face completely different consequences after speaking out. That's why Beijing can only abduct a few booksellers from HK and had to deal with the messy fallout.

I'm not sure if a few journalistic op-eds and moderate pieces of international condemnation count as "messy fallout." It seems like it was a successful, measured attempt at probing the limits of what they could get away with.

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