Comment by arglebarnacle

Interesting, when I've come across this before I have always interpreted it as "not from Hong Kong", especially in a context like this where it's raised in the context of engaging with a western counterpart's potential suspicion.

It's been my experience that westerners (I am a westerner) do have different assumptions about "mainland" Chinese people than people from Hong Kong who are assumed to be more cosmopolitan, "westernized", or even "politically neutral" from a western liberal capitalist perspective, so it seems reasonable to point it out in this context.