>Independence is not one of the demands of the protestors. Please provide a source for that claim.
Point taken. But it was one of the demands of some protesters in the past[0], so I must have got that confused with the current demands of the 2019 protesters.
Be that as it may be, the comment I was replying to was echoing points made by the pro-independence movement in justifying their stance, in particular by highlighting Hong Kong's allegedly distinct cultural identity.[1]
I'd think, for instance, that Macau has a more distinctive cultural identity than HK, and in any case, harshreality's argument sought to portray China as a cultural monolith.
The reality is that there are at least as many cultural identities as there are provinces, and in Guangdong province alone, there are three separate dialect groups -- Yue (Cantonese)[2], Hakka[3], Southern Min (Teochew[4], Leizhou[5]) -- each with their own distinct culture.
You may see why, from a certain perspective, the cultural identity argument of the pro-independence movement is rather specious. But harshreality isn't the only commentator I've seen who's brought up HK's cultural identity as an argument.
Finally, perhaps I should let a Hongkonger speak for himself. Lewis Lau Yiu-man is a commentator based in Hong Kong, who writes for Stand News[6], a pro-democracy online news website, and contributed this piece[7] to the New York Times last month. After a historical preamble, he made this claim:
>That’s because — want it or not, know it or not — the Umbrella Movement planted the seed of separatism in the city. I don’t mean that the idea was entirely new: There had been some proponents of localism, at the margins. And I don’t mean that separatism is now the order of the day[...] I mean that the Umbrella Movement was, in fact, an independence movement — but an independence movement that didn’t know itself.
He even analyses Beijing's perspective:
>And so from Beijing’s perspective, when pro-democracy protesters and their supporters reject what it perceives as its right to intervene here, they are challenging its very sovereignty. In this, at least, Beijing is correct. It knows what many Hong Kongers don’t seem to have fully appreciated: Admit it or not, we are actually rejecting Chinese sovereignty — we are already an independence movement in disguise. And it all started with the Umbrella Movement.
So there's your source.
[0] https://time.com/4440708/hong-kong-independence-china-locali...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_independence#Reasons
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yue_Chinese
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_Chinese
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teochew_dialect
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leizhou_Min
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_News
[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/opinion/hong-kong-umbrell...