Were foreign forces behind last Sunday’s huge protest march and subsequent violent confrontations against the government’s proposed extradition treaty with mainland China? It’s a claim that’s easy to make but hard to prove. Similar claims were made during the 2014 Occupy protests but remain unproven. A day after organisers said over a million people joined Sunday’s march – police said 240,000 – China’s ministry of foreign affairs and mainland state media claimed external forces had stirred political unrest in Hong Kong to undermine China. They cited as proof the opposition’s links with Western countries. This presumably means visits to the United States and Europe by democracy camp leaders, some of whom met US Vice-President Mike Pence , Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to garner international opposition to the extradition bill. Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung Kin-chung told me in a television interview “geopolitical factors” were at play. When I pressed him if that meant external forces were using Hong Kong to prevent China’s rise, he replied that was the right interpretation. Most Western democracies oppose the bill. Does that qualify as preventing China’s rise? Did foreign forces orchestrate the peaceful mass protest or just the violence that broke out after the march? Did they also instigate the blocking of streets by youngsters around the Legislative Council which began before the extradition law was due to be debated? It would require a big leap of faith to accept foreign forces could dupe a million people – most of whom had to wait for hours at the Victoria Park starting point – to march on a sweltering day. But the youngsters who clashed with police on Sunday were unfazed by the jailing of Occupy participants and Mong Kok rioters . They came with face masks and makeshift weapons, a sure sign the clash was not spontaneous. The occupation of roads in Tamar by thousands of youngsters, undeterred by helmeted police armed with shields and batons who fired tear gas, is a surreal replay of Occupy. Why are these young people not afraid? Should we blame the US Central Intelligence Agency? Or the triads, independence diehards or even unknown agents who want to tarnish the image of the opposition? Maybe it’s just that our young people have lost all hope and no longer care about the consequences of their actions as they see their home morph into just another mainland city. Sunday’s mass protest was a triumph for people power, yet a tragedy. A triumph because so many Hongkongers braved the heat to defend their freedoms but a tragedy because they believe Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has become a Beijing proxy to erode their freedoms. Why fugitive bill protests won’t change Carrie Lam’s mind I have known Lam for years but only on a professional level. Her heart is in the right place but her mouth often is not. Winning hearts and minds in a city that treasures democratic values – values not shared by our communist rulers – requires speaking in a way that resonates with Hongkongers. When hundreds of thousands march to demand Lam’s resignation, it’s clear they feel she is speaking the language of Beijing, not that of Hongkongers. Lam ran for chief executive with a campaign pledge to unite Hong Kong after the divisive rule of predecessor Leung Chun-ying. The trouble is, she has united the people against her. We’re now at a stage where it’s no longer all about an extradition law with the mainland. It’s about China standing up to the US and other Western countries. Beijing and Lam are convinced the West is using the extradition law to radicalise Hongkongers in a way that threatens China’s security. Why else are Beijing and Lam standing so firm even in the face of such massive opposition? It’s just a law, after all, and one we’ve done without for over two decades. But Beijing considers shelving the law now will be capitulation to the West. It is intent on countering what it sees as the West using Hong Kong as a Trojan horse. Michael Chugani is a Hong Kong journalist and TV show host