1. Get an entire country addicted to opium.

2. Force them to hand over some of their territory specifically to serve as a port for importing opium.

3. Forcibly impose your culture on a people with nothing to do to you.

4. Make sure the treaty you strong armed that country to sign is valid for more than a generation so you can complete your cultural assimilation project and create a population of people born and raised under your rule, totally immersed in your propaganda.

5. When that treaty FINALLY expires, clutch your perls about cOmMuNiSm and demand they remain independent for more than a generation again, creating a population that’s not only culturally manipulated but also immersed in this fear of the mainland you manufactured.

6. Claim to be their protector from the evil PeeRC and use their cultural difference you created to assert hUmAn rIgHtS and that they should become their own country (and totally not a puppet of yours) instead of returning to the country you stole them from.

It’s actually fucking genius. I can appreciate the nods to various comic book supervillains.

Why did they make the guy getting choked such a racist caricature? Along with person holding the flag

Maybe because HK is indisputably part of China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Hong_Kong