Lai See | Protests expose vulnerability of an unloved government

One point that is frequently made in conversations about the protests is that they have achieved nothing. In a banal sense, that is true. The protesters have not achieved their key aims, which included the resignation of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and significant electoral reform.

That said, the large numbers of protesters that turned out - far more than most people imagined - was a big demonstration of the dissatisfaction that has been growing in Hong Kong in recent years, particularly among young adults and students. This has made the government sit up and take notice although it has yet to formulate a credible response.

People have been genteelly protesting for months on Saturday and Sunday afternoons but have achieved nothing. People want political reform because they believe it increases the chances of having a government prepared to do something about their concerns rather than heeding or second-guessing Beijing. However, the white paper and the August 31 decision by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress left many with the sense that the mainland was attempting to wind back Hong Kong's freedoms.

There has been an outpouring of discussion about the political economy of Hong Kong, its contradictions and divisions, the inbuilt institutional biases favouring the tycoons, and the government's interaction with the central government. People are more politicised and aware. The "high degree of autonomy" that was presumed to exist under one country, two systems has turned out to be a lot lower than people assumed. The police can clear the streets, but this a stopgap measure. There needs to be a political solution.

Social tensions were cooled in 2004 with a change in government and a booming economy. That won't work this time. People are clearly fed up with the disruption to business and transport that has been caused by the protests and the government may think it has been clever by allowing them to drag on, thus driving a wedge between the protesters and the public at large. The hope is that this will deter further support for those proposing to demonstrate for electoral change.

Another way of looking at the government's strategy of dealing with the protests is that it reflects its lack of legitimacy. The government had little choice in accepting the widespread public obstruction that accompanied the protests and severely disrupted the normal business of Hong Kong. In other countries with a government elected by popular mandate, the protests would have been cleared almost immediately with the public's backing. It is unthinkable that these protests would have been allowed to drag on for this long in Europe or the United States.