Why are you lost in the argument? The point I am making is, that it would be great to have both. HK as part of China, no longer a UK colony, but also having freedoms remain intact. Shouldn't be too hard to grasp. Furthermore, I am saying, that economically how HK has been handled does not make much sense, and that ideology was at play.

Giving back HK might have been the only sensible move back then, and it might have bought HKers time and avoided a more open conflict, that wouldn't have ended well for HK.

At least Wikipedia disagrees with your sentiment, that HK was never part of China. Well, technically you said "PRC", maybe even intentionally, and you could take some weird position of claiming, that nothing inside China is part of China, because it was a different entity before PRC. But then so do many countries all over the world lose any claim to their territory. Germany, after second world war, France after French revolution, most prominently the US, after its founding ... Historically, HK was a grab of land by the UK. Granted, they built something nice up there, but only after the despicable acts they committed historically in the region. If we get into what the UK did historically in the region, it will not lead to a moral high ground.