For as long as anyone can remember, high-ranking officials of the Western political establishment regarded Hong Kong as a colony whose policy they were free to determine at their sole discretion. Think, for instance, of John Bolton, now the former National Security Adviser to the US President. An ardent proponent of the British-American intervention wars, Bolton once said that the only model of governance that will fit Hong Kong is the English one. The response of official Beijing and the entire Chinese society to escapades of this kind is more than obvious – undisguised irritation: it does not belong to the 21st century politicians to consider Hong Kong a British colonial enclave, as it has long been part of a sovereign and independent China.

Meanwhile, Western intervention in Chinese affairs has gone far beyond official statements. The ex-head of the Hong Kong Bar Association (HKBA) Junius Kwan-yiu Ho furnished the wide public with proof that the one orchestrating the movement for Hong Kong's separation from China is none other than the US Consulate with its numerous "assistants" on the ground. Kwan-yiu Ho and other Chinese experts are convinced that the Hong Kong developments are a new version of the "color revolutions" conducted by the Americans over the past quarter-century – following the "orange" one and the Maidan coup in Ukraine, the "pink" one in Georgia and so on down the list.

There is hardly any other way to explain, among other things, the following fact: during the two summer months this year alone, as if on cue, there were as much as forty-two (!) large-scale protests in Hong Kong. These days, on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the PRC, the protests have erupted with renewed vigor. At that, the method of controlling a crowd of aggressively disposed radicals is the same in all the cases…

The world has long learned a political axiom: if the "popular unrest" is organized in its nature, you need to look for its sponsors overseas.  However, the intervention of external forces in Chinese developments is not particularly concealed. Well, there should be nothing to hide, as long as top White House officials are endorsing the protesters. Back in the summer, in an interview with the Voice of America TV channel, the same aforementioned John Bolton openly threatened the Chinese leadership, stressing that the PRC should think twice before taking any action in response to the mass protests in Hong Kong. It looks like Bolton's threats may become materialized this fall.

Pro-Western journalists have waved aside claims that the US had a hand in the events in China. Today, no bones are made about this. Thus, one of Hong Kong's central newspapers Ta Kung Pao published photos of a meeting between head of the US Consulate political department Julie Ide and opposition activists. The article points to the American diplomat's involvement in US subversive actions in the Middle East and her "experience with social groups" in Hong Kong.  Washington's response was not long in coming.  The US State Department issued an angry rant – not because it was caught red-handed, but rather due to the disappointment over confidential information having been disclosed.

As a result, anti-Chinese opposition activist Joshua Wong had to admit his affiliation with American Consulate representatives. According to Professor Lee Haidong with the Beijing University of International Relations, the collected facts are enough to come to the following conclusion: Western organizations directly control action by separatist groups in Hong Kong.

70-year-old billionaire businessman and media tycoon Jimmy Lai is still considered the separatist leader. He has come to the United States to lecture on how bad things are as regards human rights in China. This summer, Lai met with a number of American politicians, distinguished by the most strongly pronounced anti-Chinese sentiments, including Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It is fair to say that US President Donald Trump kept away from his subordinates' rendezvous with the zealous Chinese oppositionist. Later, Trump's political opponents would not leave one stone upon another in him for showing this excessive, in their opinion, restraint towards China.

Let's get back to the Hong Kong developments. Official Beijing's negative reaction is caused not only by US actions, but also by the stance of the UK as well. Here, as you know, we are dealing with a long-standing narrative. In the nineteenth century, the British crown succeeded in capturing and annexing Hong Kong in course of its opium wars against China. A century and a half later, in 1997, the enclave officially returned to the People's Republic of China, which became a step towards reconciliation, an act of restoring historical justice. And on July 1, 2019, which was the 22nd anniversary of the former British colony's transfer to China, witnessed a group of radicals capture the building of the enclave's Legislative Council and hoist the British colonial flag on it.

One can hardly conceive of a more brazen provocation against the sovereign China. The hooligans were arrested, but instead of condemning their actions, the former British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, following the chief overseas orchestrator, also wagged its finger at Beijing, implying that it not dare to respond with "repression" to the manifestation of "people's will".

New Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom Dominic Raab sustained his predecessor's course. He demanded an independent investigation into the Chinese police for allegedly using force against the "masses", virtually the violent thugs. The Chinese Foreign Ministry had to remind Britain it had neither jurisdiction nor supervisory rights in Hong Kong, and should better tend to its own affairs.

Anyway, Great Britain's imperial habits are obvious. The former mother country cannot apparently accept the loss of its colony and would not mind recalling the "good old times".

It is clear that behind the turmoil provoked in Hong Kong, there is a Western desire to restrain China, to stop its economic growth. Young people who have taken to the streets of Hong Kong with iron bars are most likely unaware whose dirty work they are doing. This is what the calculation is based on – to weaken the development of a country being a threat to Anglo-American hegemony in the world by hands of organized radicals.

Certainly, in an attempt to do away with a competitor, the West can occasion China a lot of trouble. For instance, to introduce new sanctions against China inspired by the Global Magnitsky Act, as insisted by US Republican Senator Marco Rubio. Or to adopt a "post-partisan" law to give free rein to the anti-Chinese opposition, which Democrat Nancy Pelosi is working on: the US likes extending its own legislation to other countries. Finally, the US Congress may further restrict China's access to the capital and exchange financing market.

And yet, no matter how much passions get escalated, it seems that the situation in Hong Kong is not going to develop into a global clash of civilizations. The world is different today. Apart from China itself, which is gaining weight in world affairs, new development alliances are making oneself known, like BRICS, SCO, Belt and Road Initiative. It means that the Western model of domination stumbles and is unable to come up with worthy solutions to present-day challenges. In the simplest terms, what kind of nonsense it really is to dream about colonial way in the age of supersonic speeds and 5G-generation breakthrough computer technologies.