On August 23, 1989 about 2 million people in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined hands to create the Baltic Way – a human chain that stretched 675km (420 miles) across the three republics. In recent weeks, some protesters in Hong Kong have taken to forming similar chains as a sign of their defiance to the city government.

Marciulionyte said that representatives from Lithuania and other European nations had repeatedly told Beijing that peaceful protests and assembly were an integral part of universal human rights, but that did not mean the city was facing the same struggles as the Baltic nations had.

“Lithuania fully adheres with the one-China policy, acknowledging that Hong Kong is a legal part of China,” she said.

“What connects the two ‘ways’ is not the goal, but the means – peaceful resistance. And while it is very important to us, we cannot claim to have invented it, it has been used in history all over the world before.”

On the day the Hong Kong Way was created on August 23, people in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius also joined hands in a show of solidarity and to mark the 30th anniversary of their protest.

“It was this same theme that we raised in conversation with the Chinese diplomats in Vilnius,” Marciulionyte said. “Be they pro-Hong Kong protest supporters or other Chinese nationals, all of them are equal members of the Chinese community living in Lithuania and must respect the right to peaceful demonstrations which is sacred to the people of our country.”

The envoy appealed for urgent steps to be taken to de-escalate the situation in Hong Kong and called for restraint on all sides.

“Violence is not good for anyone,” she said.

But the protests and fighting go on. The latest large-scale human chain was formed on September 14, when thousands of Hongkongers linked hands along Lion Rock, a granite peak overlooking the Kowloon peninsula. The event coincided with the Lantern Festival and participants held lights, unfurled banners and chanted slogans calling for “freedom” for the city and universal suffrage.

China’s state media was quick to put down the ambitions of the Hong Kong Way. In an opinion piece on August 23, People’s Daily said: “Everyone knows what the ‘Baltic Way’ of 30 years ago is … as for the nature of the so-called Hong Kong Way, it is perfectly clear without saying it.

“Where does the Hong Kong Way lead? It will not, and cannot go down the way of ‘Hong Kong independence’. Building human chains to make the so called ‘Hong Kong Way’ is tantamount to digging one’s own grave,” it said.

Zhang Jianrong, an expert on Russia at the Shanghai Institute of Social Sciences, said the Hong Kong protest was very different to the struggle for independence in the Baltic.

“I wonder how many young people who took part in Hong Kong Way know the history of the Baltic Way,” he said.

“At the time [of the Baltic Way], the Soviet economy was in trouble,” said Zhang. “The people who took part in the Hong Kong Way did so for all sorts of reasons, but most of them were not really thinking about independence.”

Zheng Yifan, a Beijing historian who specialises in the Soviet Union, agreed.

“Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were independent nations before the USSR’s occupation,” he said. “So their demonstration was calling for independence. It is totally different from Hong Kong.”

Richard Turscanyi, a researcher at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies at Palacky University Olomouc in the Czech Republic, said the end of the Soviet Union was a huge shock to China, and Central and Eastern European nations were seen as “traitors” of communism.

“The collapse of the Soviet Union obviously is seen as the major case study to be studied and avoided at all costs,” he said.

“I think the Chinese leadership took an unambiguous lesson from it – no concessions and no wavering.”

Additional reporting by Kinling Lo and Echo Xie