When you say weak and ineffectual government... man I can't agree more. It is so painful to watch HK government make one stupid mistake after another, they are comically incompetent.
But then the HK government is mostly comprised of professional bureaucrats, good at running a government, they are not propagandist, but still...
Problem is CCP can't just mind their own business in home base, if it works once the Americans will try it over and over again. As China's interest expand, good enough at home base is not good enough anymore.
This is where you are wrong, because you can't see the bigger picture. First of all, even though I used the term "weak and ineffectual", these two words themselves are too vague and generalized. Ukraine, Hong Kong and Libya could all be viewed as having a "weak and ineffectual" government. But they are totally different. Hong Kong government is NOT the same as Ukrainian and Libyan governments.
Ukrainian and Libyan governments are structurally weak, they are plagued by corruption, incompetency and they lack the institutional capabilities to contend with "social engineering warfare" you've mentioned earlier.
Hong Kong government and institution itself is not weak. They are actually extremely strong and effective. The problem with Hong Kong is their inherent problem with their separation of power.
Because the uniqueness of Hong Kong's history and the 1C2S system, HK's executive, legislative and judicial power are divided along racial/ethnic identity lines. This gives it a fatal flaw in a social environment when identity politics and populism are on a rise.
HK wants to be a western democratic society. However, a western democratic society can only be stable when its governmental power is not divided along racial/ethnic lines.
Imagine the US, with a right-wing white house, a far left dominated parliament, and a supreme court where most of the Judges are Mexicans and Venezuelans who don't have US citizenship.