According to an interesting article by Democracy Digest,

An estimated 1.7 million people took part in a peaceful pro-democracy protest (NYT/CFR) in the city center yesterday, the second-largest demonstration since the protest movement began more than two months ago.

Beijing’s patience over Hong Kong appears to be waning, Council on Foreign Relations analyst Jerome A. Cohen writes.

In the spring of 1989, I reported in Tiananmen Square for The New York Review of Books. For anyone who was there, Tiananmen now casts a long shadow across the demonstrations in Hong Kong, notes Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society.

The Tiananmen Square demonstrations taught that powerful movements of dissent against the Chinese Communist Party are almost always destined to end in confrontation. Why? he asks in Foreign Affairs:

See full story here.