> crime in Taiwan and fled to Hong Kong

There's a lot more to that story. Taiwan explicitly ruled out accepting the proposed extradition law, despite IIRC a HKer murdering their HK partner whilst on holiday in Taiwan.

> chief among them universal suffrage, or the direct election of the HK Chief Executive

You mean the promised universal suffrage of the Chief Executive that was written in the Sino-British agreement, and decades later has still not materialised.

I can see why that might be a sore point to the citizens of Hong Kong.