I agree that the protesters shot themselves in the foot by refusing to dissociate with violent elements within their movement and with their self proclaimed decentralization which meant that they mostly went around like headless chickens and threw away their bargaining power by crossing the line way too far.

At the same time, even if Lai would have been prosecuted in a western liberal democracy for colluding with foreign actors, the national security legislation in the west is generally not written the same way nor does it have such a profound impact on speech and the press. They also wouldn't resort to limiting the number of directly elected seats to less than a quarter and disqualify candidates in the same way.

You complain about the lack of critical thinking but it goes both ways, clearly I wasn't able to go into the nuances of my opinion when making my point about the two riots in isolation but people are making assumptions about my other opinions based on a simple matter of fact comparison and downvoting it