For all the vaunted talk about how the CCP plans in terms of centuries and how they are so much more far sighted than western politicians, the continual abuse of Hong Kong's special status seems extremely short sighted, because it is going to make peaceful re-unification of Taiwan completely impossible.
CCP planned in term of decades and were more far sighted than western politicians. This changed with the rise of Xi Jing Ping who is a short sighted petty autocrat but unfortunately extremely good at political maneuvering to concentrate power in his hands and undoing what little checks were instituted by Deng Xiaoping.
I had high hopes for China's future back when I lived there but that is no longer the case with the current government.
To expand, Xi is a leader for life [1]. China is best modelled as a large, wealthy dictatorship which will act to keep its narrow leadership in power. This is very different from the long-term planning which characterised its growth when it was capable of peaceful transitions of power.
Pushing this legislation (or kidnapping bookstore owners publicising corruption amongst Beijing’s elite [2]), for China, is stupid. It stokes a vocal, organised opposition to Beijing. It also makes clean integration in ‘47 less likely. (The fraction of Hong Kong residents identifying as Chinese versus Hong Kongese has plummeted in the last few years [3].) From the perspective or keeping Xi in power, however, the ham-fistedness makes sense.
This strikes me as the quintessential problem with autocracies. Sometimes one gets extremely efficient governments in the short term, when the autocrat is competent and not entirely corrupt, but in the long run whatever short term gains were had are squandered by corruption and greed. Democracy is inefficient in the short term but efficient in the long run.
The situation is a lot more complicated than you make it seem. We barely have any idea how inner politics work in China, since little information leaks out unlike in most other nations. I don't think you can make a definitive statement on a leader whose name you haven't spelt correctly.
There might be two things at play, the first described in the article that this is really a ploy to get "countries that have extradition treaties with Hong Kong to either renegotiate them successfully " possibly in favour of China.
Also Hong Kong's status might just be a constant question that if Hong Kong is part of China but has some local autonomy....why can't other parts of China? Especially if there was an economic crisis and Hong Kong faired better...
Easing them in might be secondary to domestic concerns.
These already exist, there are 5 autonomous regions based around minority groups. There's also Macau which has a similar status to Hong Kong even if the system is quite different.
Peaceful reunification with Taiwan under CCP rule is already impossible. Neither side of Taiwanese politics would accept that: the big political divide in Taiwan is between people who consider themselves Taiwanese and support independence (pan-Green), and people who consider themselves Chinese but think the CCP are illegitimate rulers (pan-Blue).
Maybe this analogy is a bit of a stretch, but imagine the pan-Blue as ethnic Cubans in Florida, who despite feeling more Cuban than "Floridian" would never peacefully agree to Miami being reunited with Cuba under Castro regime rule.
The only way China and Taiwan could be reunited peacefully is if the CCP falls, the mainland becomes a capitalist liberal democracy acceptable, the pan-Blue coalition somehow becomes politically dominant in Taiwan despite being in opposition now, and they negotiate an agreement with the new Chinese regime. This is maybe not totally impossible, but still far-fetched.
I expect the CCP understands all of this. Since peaceful reunification with Taiwan is already impossible without the CCP going under anyway, it's not a good reason not to interfere with Hong Kong.
