Why so many Chinese students can’t understand the Hong Kong protests

I would also argue that China has been strongarming other countries in excess to any other nation except for the USA in recent decades. China is the only country that uses face and "people's feelings" as distinct political instruments. But this is also not my main point and also not the point of the OP.

For the other things, let me make two points. First, your assertion that this also happens in other countries does not make it okay. This is a fallacy often used. What I am saying is that the rate and fashion to how these things are reporting on, protested against, and dealt with in other countries, is much different than in China. It is a fact that many bad things happen in Western countries right this moment. But the people arrested or disappearing for pointing these things out is pretty much zero. I was just on business in the US, and watching MSNBC and Fox News at the same time, it's clear that there is a huge range for opinions on literally all political and economic actions and actors - and they are strongly voiced. Indeed the US has a strong culture of government distrust and conspiracy theorists that simply would not exist in China. In (most of) the EU, measures done by the CCP could never even be implemented at all, as neither the political force. executive capabilities, nor the acceptance in the population exists in such a way. But even if these things would be implemented, you could always find a country that does things better, treats people better and is more humane. So I think this framing is really useless, whether we argue about China, the USA or Sweden.

Second, why are people afraid of China? We are afraid because we do not want the Chinese model to succeed. As much as it helped pull people from poverty, it has created and cemented an incredibly wealthy and powerful upper class, and we are rightfully worried that our own elites take some hints. We are not scared of Chinese soldiers marching into our country, but if China would develop similar cultural hegemony as the US has currently, our world would be be much worse (at least for me, as I am a minority). China violates very basic tenets of human rights that we believe enable us to live freely. China also implements the mechanisms necessary to push strongly the will of the majority on the minority - or to be more precise, the will of someone on anyone. Again, I only need to mention the very real plight of Muslims in China - "uniformize or perish" - for you to hopefully see this point. This very same thing could happen easily elsewhere, and indeed we have seen it happen in the past. You may, for example, want to google the term "Stasi" if you have the time.

Its a tiresome trope, but people valuing a free society will always be deadly afraid that living with a boot on their necks is an actual viable political and economic model, because if it is, what's keeping history from swinging exactly that way? Free and tolerant societies are the exception in history and we - especially minorities in any sense - would like that to change! Is it a pipe dream? Maybe - but that's exactly where this fear comes from. It is probably difficult to understand this point if you belong to both a local and (eventually) globally dominant grouping.

Finally, as to your first sentence: I think it is ALSO easy to propose many actionable and easy measures to make things better in China, for example, stop doing the things we agree are "bad". And many countries or governments are not doing these things. So I ask again, why can you not imagine anything better? And furthermore, where would we be if we can not imagine anything better?

And if HK and China do eventually become liberal democracies, it'll be because of gradual change within the Chinese government.

I'm personally very optimistic about their long term prospects, I just think history has taught us that violent revolution or sudden change usually leads to negative consequences in the short to mid term. There's more than enough examples in our lifetime.

On the other hand, most of the economic gains, the reduction of poverty around the world, the economic development of Europe, Asia and Africa have all been done thanks to the rule of law, relative peace, investment, etc... Not due to revolution.

The extradition bill is just the latest one.

Many protestors have explicitly called for independence. Most are simply demanding things that are not possible with HK as a mainland managed province with the current powers that be in Beijing, and I can't imagine that they don't know this - it's a de facto desire for independence.

If the ROC was magically in charge, then HK probably wouldn't care about being independent.