The Chinese absolutely bear responsibility for how they've governed the last 30 years, just as the British bear responsibility for how they governed the prior 150.

The fact that British HK liberalized a little at the very last second before handover is better than nothing, and the National Security Law is definitely bad, but right now the scoreboard is 7/150 years of free speech under the UK, compared to 23/28 years of free speech under PRC. It'll take another 100 years for the PRC to have a worse record than the UK.

I think it’s somewhat disingenuous to ignore the trend direction.

The Netherlands has a longer history of monarchy under their current government (present monarchy founded 1813) than North Korea (current government established 1948). Does that mean you’d rather live in North Korea than the Netherlands?

The plain and obvious fact remains that Hong Kongers would have more political liberties today if the UK retained control of the territory, regardless of the complete colonial insanity of the original arrangement.

Can you name one present existing British overseas territory that has less of a right to criticize the government than Hong Kong? There are still a bunch of them to choose from from.