Beginning in 2014 there was a series of controversies before violent protests erupted in connection with the Hong Kong Government’s 2019 Extradition Bill, which in turn led to the National Security Law of 2020. Often discrete events do not suggest a larger catastrophe until it is too late. The controversy over the State Council’s 2014 white paper, even the ‘Occupy’ Protests of that year, the strange ‘missing booksellers’ controversy in late 2015 and the 2017 West Kowloon Terminus issue each did not in themselves suggest the sweeping legislative changes that would take place by 2020.