Tens of thousands of protesters are ignoring officials’ pleas to stand down and go hone, and are instead blocking streets and highways in the financial district.  They’re demanding a free choice of candidates in the 2017 elections for Hong Kong Chief executive, something Beijing will not allow.

Some protesters are already labeling the movement “the umbrella revolution”, for the umbrellas that protesters are using to protect themselves from police pepper spray and tear case.  Cops moved in with batons and tear gas on Sunday night, but that only brought out protesters – a mix of students and Occupy Central protesters and their supporters.  Police tried again Monday night to move the throngs, but they are hanging in.

China has ruled Hong Kong since 1997 as “One Country, Two Systems”. Beijing previously used censorship and the military to quickly tamp down protests everywhere in the mainland.  The former British colony has managed to keep its own laws and traditions of liberty in the media and on the Internet, which is how the protesters are able to keep up with the latest actions. 

Beijing might try to crackdown on the protests using the military.  But that would inevitably invite comparisons to the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989, and undermine confidence in Hong Kong as a global business hub.

“This is already much bigger than anything the Beijing or Hong Kong authorities expected,” said Larry Diamond of Stanford’s University’s Hoover Institution think tank. “They have no strategy for peacefully defusing it, because that would require negotiations, and I don’t think President Xi Jinping will allow that.  Now, if he yields, he will look weak, something he clearly detests.”