A lot of what you say sounds like my general opinion until increasingly over the pandemic period, it started to morph.
There is a generations-long fight to break the spirits and re-inform people what and how to think, and to a large part that's been effective especially in the outer regions and lower tier cities.
But the people protesting right now are the city folk by and large. The University students - just like at Tiananmen. They aren't stupid. The chants and screaming was frequently about democracy, sarcastic comments about marxist philosophy.
For example, the new narrative that the government is peddling in massive form is that the enemy foreign forces (USA) are behind these protests. The Chinese response was 'do these foreign forces happen to be Engel and Marx?'.
Like, they know what's up. They are just forced into silence for years. It breaks the spirit of so many, but not all. It's true that on a daily basis, as long as their financial situation is good, they can tolerate it. But now that is started to fade away and be dominated by physical freedom. It only takes so much for the carrot on the stick that is money no longer looks so appetizing compared to democracy.
HK already had democracy so, wealthy or not, they knew full well what they were in for. Like you said Mainlanders never had the taste of it, so have not craved it. They crave it now not because they know what it's like, but because they're desperately seeking any alternative and the West suddenly looks pretty good, despite its high crime rate, etc.
Hell, rather have a high crime rate by the people than a high crime rate by the unaccountable government!
Nothing will happen immediately, that's true, but I suspect the damage is already done. We're already seeing more scraps being thrown, and a greater fear of cracking down. People now know that they won't, by and large, be exterminated if they protest with enough people. That's the 'taste' they're getting. The very first step to a democratic movement, I reckon. (very far in the future)
"enough" - that's the gist of everything.
Whilst I'd love to see a successful movement forward, there just isn't enough mass to push it forward. Be it by force, or dropping a few more carrots, the hardliners can solve their problem quite easily.
We won't see changes for the good in our lifetime. Sad but fact