Another important distinction is that the NI Protocol has within it a "break clause" which allows for it to be suspended if it is causing difficulties. The EU itself was on the point of implementing "Article 16" when it believed it would be deprived Covid vaccines. The Protocol was also signed by the UK on the understanding that it would be implemented sensibly with the sole aim of protecting the EU's Single Market from contamination by goods entering Ireland from the north. (As an aside, quite why the UK believed this would happen is somewhat mysterious, but there we are).
Around 0.5% of all goods entering the EU do so across the Irish border. But almost 20% of all EU customs checks made by the EU are on goods entering Northern Ireland, carried out on the pseudo border that has been created within the UK. This is clearly unsustainable and it is obvious that the EU is not operating the agreement in Good Faith. It needs to be abandoned.
As far as China goes, it was obvious that Hong Kong would be subsumed into the greater China after 1999. The only thing that has surprised me is that it has taken so long. The idea that HK will somehow be permitted to carry on as a relatively libertarian zone within authoritarian China was fanciful and the people there were badly misled.