From Protests in June to the Occupation of Legislative Council on July 1

Abstract

This chapter examines the political events, including peaceful and violent protests, that led to the occupation of the Legislative Council on July 1, demonstrating a snowballing effect from a series of protests in June that eventually brought about the legislative capture by demonstrators. The protestors’ capture and vandalism of the legislature was unprecedented and delegitimizing to the entire HKSAR government. It angered the central government in Beijing. The violent protests on July 1 had deep repercussions on the political development of Hong Kong, for they raised an array of issues, ranging from the protestors’ strategies to the policing tactics, from the participation of radicals to their escape to overseas places like Taiwan and the United States and from the responses of Beijing to the following violent confrontations between protestors and police.