This is just plainly inaccurate. There is a spectrum of desired outcome among protesters, from a China that simply better honors the One Country, Two Systems mantra, to outright Independence, and I'd say that most protesters align with the former, but include true free and fair elections, as opposed to the CCP's version in which they have pick the handful of candidates from which Hong Kongers can freely and fairly choose. Many of those that advocate for Independence seem to be called offs from that camp, who have lost all hope that Beijing might actually honor its agreement.

The problem here is that the CCP has created its own interpretation of vocabulary that is otherwise universally accepted and Britain (and the US) failed to account for that and put in place the protections that would have forestalled such aggressive dismantling of Hong Kong's civic framework pre-handover.