Some do, some don't. I was there recently, most of natives who I spoke to didn't really care that much, and the people who cared, was basically 50/50 between agreeing to more Chinese control vs against. Still, I'm a foreigner, so I'm likely not getting the full picture, people don't exactly go around flagging they're opposing China's crackdown, so YMMV.
Well, the article is literally about what happens when you're a leader of such movement, not if you're a random person on the street talking with other random people.
People are generally not super closed nor open about it, although some individuals were more closed about it. Most seemed honest when asked about it, but again, YMMV.
If nothing else is crystal clear since the rise of the Internet and the difficulty in censoring happenings it's that the the will of the people is utterly irrelevant in the face of organized assaults by armed thugs, wherever they may be. Most of their efforts in peace time are dedicated to putting in place barriers to movement and access to supply chain logistics by intentionally making them fragile so when push comes to shove the people can't actually push back.
That's quite a defeatist analysis but I agree that online and offline organising is made increasingly harder by mass surveillance and censorship. That's also why I wish China was more interventionist abroad and would be willing to provide(more) support to international liberation movements.
