The battle for Hong Kong.

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: Cover story

Protesters are demanding democratic elections for Hong Kong. But China's leaders have other ideas.

Joshua Wong, a skinny 18-year-old with black glasses, doesn't fit the typical profile of a revolutionary. But to the thousands of young people who've clogged the streets of Hong Kong this fall to protest for democracy, Wong has achieved rock-star status. He's whipped up crowds with fiery speeches and demanded that China's leaders allow Hong Kong to hold democratic elections. "If students don't stand in the front line, who will?" he says.

The protests started in September, when about 200 people led by Wong blocked a Hong Kong government building. The police responded by arresting Wong and attacking protesters with tear gas and pepper spray.

But the crackdown had the opposite of its intended effect: As word got out on social media, thousands of people joined the demonstrations. Normal activity in the bustling city came to a halt. Police used chain saws to dismantle the barricades protesters had built to block roads. Dozens of protesters were arrested. Others were beaten by gangs linked to the Chinese Mafia.

Authorities hinted at worse to come: "The best way to avoid having all of Hong Kong's residents pay a steeper price," one Hong Kong official said ominously, is to end the protests "as soon as possible."

But the protesters have held their ground. To shield themselves from the pepper spray, they've used umbrellas, which have given the movement a symbol and a name: the Umbrella Revolution.

The Hong Kong protests have presented China with one of its biggest and most unexpected challenges in years. If President Xi Jinping (SHEE jin-PING) gives in to protesters' demands, it could be seen as a sign of weakness, which China's leaders avoid at all costs.

"If there is a sense that a population can stand up to Beijing and win, it may well contribute to other protests in China," says Elizabeth Economy, a China expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

One Country, Two Systems

Hong Kong is a complicated place. It consists of some 240 islands off the coast of southeastern China and the Kowloon Peninsula, which is attached to the mainland (see map). And while Hong Kong is part of China, it's treated differently because of its unique history.

For more than 150 years, Hong Kong was a British colony (see Timeline, p. 14). Under Britain, it became a major international trading port and evolved into a Westernized society with a tradition of free speech and a vibrant press. The rest of China has been a one-party Communist state since 1949.

In 1984, Britain and China signed a treaty agreeing that Hong Kong would return to Chinese rule in 1997. But Hong Kongers worried that the transfer would threaten the freedoms that they'd long taken for granted.

As part of the handoff, China agreed to a compromise known as "one country, two systems." Under this arrangement, Hong Kong would operate under different rules from the Chinese mainland for 50 years*: The city's freewheeling capitalist financial system would remain in place and freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and a free press would be guaranteed.

There are no such protections in the rest of China. Though economic reforms have led to three decades of explosive...