June 4, 1989 events in China still have a profound effect on Hong Kong's political scene

The 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown forever changed Martin Lee Chu-ming's political career and his ties with the mainland.

Two years earlier, Xu Jiatun, then director of the mainland's representative office in Hong Kong - the political arm of the Xinhua News Agency and predecessor to Beijing's liaison office here - offered to provide Lee, who was chairman of Hong Kong's Bar Association from 1980 to 1983, with financial help to form a political group.

Lee and fellow democrat Szeto Wah later co-founded the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, which organised protests against Beijing's suppression of the pro-democracy movement. The move was a bittersweet turn of events for Lee: From 1985, he had helped draft the Basic Law, Hong Kong's mini-constitution, with Beijing authorities.

The bloody crackdown in Beijing convulsed Hong Kong's political landscape. The violent response to peaceful protesters cemented a mistrust many Hongkongers have for the communist mainland. The current crop of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists has a tense relationship with Beijing. That strain has complicated the path to the 2017 elections for chief executive and the promises of universal suffrage made by Beijing.

Jiang Shigong , deputy director of Peking University's Centre for Hong Kong and Macau Studies, said the 1989 crackdown continued to feed tensions. "It has also intensified the anti-communist mentality among some Hongkongers," he said.

Both Lee and Szeto, the alliance chairman until his death in 2011, resigned from the Basic Law Drafting Committee after mainland authorities snuffed out the 1989 pro-democracy protests, killing hundreds. Lee went on to start the United Democrats of Hong Kong in 1990, and in 1994 merged it with another political group, Meeting Point, to form the Democratic Party.