HK doesn't pay tax to central government, and is too close and too small to secede as long as mainland has some semblance of cohesive power, UK admitted China could roll over HK in the mid 80s if they wanted to + the lesson politburo learned from USSR's collapse is to not fragment at any cost. To the mainland, HK is not a unwieldy, far flung holding that takes commiserate projection to tame. It's a small city of 7million located less than 100km of Southern Theater Command.
Hong Kong will be paying an unrestricted amount as national security fee to central government (Chinese [1] Google translate [2]), and as an estimate, China is spending more on domestic security than military [3]--they perceive a greater threat from inside than from outside.
That's not a tax to the mainland, but new operation cost per national security commitments. Though technicalities aside, it could totally be exploited as a new tax that could be as onerous as politburo decides. HK autonomy is definitely over, though I surmise it's future is still indeterminate. There's good case to cultivate the city for another 1C2S model closer to Singapore, but it will take time, and indoctrination via patriotic education of new youth cohorts to produce a society that's more compatible with CCP 20 years from now. It's the last peaceful 1C2S gambit within reunification time frame.
I don't know how the article about PAP relates, though I was going to mention in the original comment that HK wouldn't take more few PAP detachments to tame even without "military" intervention. The key point, being that it's not a "frontier" territory and surrounded by so much CCP para/military/security that secession is not possible.
