As China gets powerful economically, financially and militarily, resisting China will be a pointless exercise. It will be a gradual unification. It is being done economically and financially. In the next few decades it will be done politically.
The military option is off the table. China has been making Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau depend on mainland China for trade, investment and finance. Once the economic integration is done, the financial integration will happen when the use of the renminbi increases in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. Once economic and financial integration is complete, it's pretty much half the job done.
Then certain aspects of political integration will happen with the end result being full integration. The CPC leaders plan for 20-50 year horizons. The CPC leaders are pretty much following how the European Union integrated economically, financially and politically.
People can protest all they want, but as long as we have the important people in our pocket, the resistors don't matter.