Joshua Wong is a Hong Kong Kid at heart. Born and raised by two middle-class parents, he’s a mainland teenager who wanders into midnight barbeque shops of the chaotic Temple Street market, feasting on steaming rickshaw noodles with his girlfriend. They settle inside the din of English and Cantonese scattered throughout one such restaurant. With a pair of stained chopsticks in one hand and a smartphone in the other, it’s almost easy for Joshua to ignore the murmur of the overhead TV.

What he cannot ignore, however, is his face splashed across the fluorescent TV screen. Images of the student-led protest movement blockading the Admiralty district cycle over and over on the nightly broadcast. An anchor makes empty comments on the dilemma the hybrid city faces in its burgeoning youth—a generation that has chosen unpredictable democracy over a heavy-handed equilibrium. No one in the eatery, however, pays much attention to the government-sanctioned conduit. In this local fast-food joint, it becomes obvious why Joshua cannot bear to see his home city dangle by the strings of an empire. It is also why Joshua, a leader of the protest campaign, cannot allow Hong Kong’s livelihood to depend on whims of President Xi Jinping.

“The future will not be decided by adults,” says Wong. “I would like to ask adults, people with capital and power, Why are they not fighting for democracy?”

As 18-year old Wong grows ever wary of adulthood, Hong Kong also seems unable to mature. The densely-populated city, housing one of the world’s most vibrant financial centers, is a major international port and a humanitarian marvel. With its conception as a tiny Qing-dynasty fishing port seized by the British in the mid-19th century, Hong Kong has been granted a 50-year adjustment period upon the colony’s handover to China in 1997. The “one country, two systems” policy allows Hong Kong a “significant degree of autonomy” on everything but security matters during those 50 years, with the eventual goal of universal suffrage.

In fact, Hong Kong has flourished as a full democracy ever since. The city has welcomed refugees from China since the Cultural Revolution and foundation of the Communist Party in 1949, serving both as a bastion of peace and platform for prosperity. Nearly 7.2 million people live among its tower-studded skyline, enjoying the second most effective health care system in the world and fourth best public education system in the world. Chinese migrants to the early port city brought a diverse influx of labor, turning Hong Kong into the manufacturing hub it is today. The city’s GDP has grown more than 180 times since 1961, due in no small part to its free market and cultural complicity.

In almost every respect, Hong Kong is a modern city without a modern government. By its own warrant, the colony has been able to achieve staggering socioeconomic success. The same Chinese immigrants who sought to escape persecution and start anew are beginning to make room for a younger generation, one gifted with the opportunity of forging a unique national identity. Perhaps it is not so difficult to then imagine, that during this period of relative estrangement, the Hong Kong identity will no longer translate to the broad Chinese identity.

So when the People's Republic of China attempted to force a “national education” system onto Hong Kong public curriculum in 2014, Wong founded the protest group Scholarism. His organization pushed against the standardized system that flagrantly neglected events such as the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square. If instituted, it would be the first significant policy the Chinese government introduced in violation of the “one country, two systems” deal. Only when 100,000 people joined Wong in his quiet anger did the PRC finally back off.

When Beijing again reversed its promise in 2007 to grant give Hong Kong citizens universal suffrage, dormant locals were reinspired into action. Crowds gathered in the city’s Admiralty financial district to peacefully protest the change, which would require Beijing to vet and approve all government candidates for election. What could have concluded with rational compromise ended up turning into China’s most consequential protest since the 1989 pro-democracy rallies were flattened at Tiananmen.

Perhaps the PRC was sending a warning with its brutal response, reminding protestors that their special liberties would evaporate in 33 years’ time, when the Hong Kong reverts to Chinese governance. Perhaps the PRC was finished with entertaining the notion of dissent, flexing the rigid muscle of its military backbone against nonviolent civil disobedience. Perhaps the PRC was trying to force the city to grow up—even if maturity took the form of riot police. Despite the inconsolable army that threatened protesters, the yellow umbrellas unfurled by both young and old against pepper spray soon became a symbol of the movement. The glow of raised smartphone screens captured every angle of police thuggery, sparking an international outpouring of support grounded in sympathy and not hatred.

Joshua Wong, a teen icon for the younger generation, does not take the preconceived mold of natural leader. Instead, with his bowl-cut bangs and thick glasses, the skinny 18-year old climbs onto the podium with hunched shoulders. Yet when he delivers his speech, the crowd is riveted by his rhetoric. His body sways with his rapid-fire Cantonese; the simple passion in his delivery demands attention. He, like 200,000 other protestors, are fed up with Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chin-yang’s unwillingness to stand up for his native people. They are tired of having to depend on the PRC’s every beck and call for the stability of their future and their children’s future.

“We’re not North Korea, we know what freedom is,” says Carol Lo, 35, an older protester and parent of a 9-year-old girl. “How will [my daughter] survive, if this situation gets worse and worse?” she asked.

What could have been a hopeful start, a twenty-first-century chance for educated students to reshape their own futures, ended with a medieval response from the PRC. Eventually turning down student requests for negotiation altogether, Chief Executive Leung Chin-yang buckled to Beijing and decided to sacrifice real political change if it meant not rocking the boat.

“When I hear the [Chinese] national anthem start to play I certainly did not feel moved, so much as I felt angry,” says Joshua. “When it tells you to ‘Arise! All those who refuse to be slaves,” why is our treatment today different than those slaves? We still don’t have the right to universal suffrage. Even with 200,000 people participating in civil disobedience, the government still turns a blind eye?”

The 2014 Hong Kong democracy protests ultimately failed to have tangible effect. Leung Chin-yang remains in power as government workers clear the last of the street blockades in Hong Kong’s financial center. Joshua Wong and other student leaders face legal charges for his involvement in the protests; morale steadily wanes with no organized body to channel public frustration.

However, to say that nothing came out of these protests would be to say nothing came out of Tiananmen, or Selma, or Stonewall. Each protest, each disturbance of the carefully preserved silence, merely acts as a catalyst for the next generation. Protest breeds protest, inevitably forcing society to reconsider its design. The endless, fruitless negotiations that favor technicality over action—they do not fix the underlying issue. China’s leaders may never give in to the demands of students, but the kind of youthful hope that powered the Occupy Central can never fully be extinguished either. Rather than see Hong Kong as a victory for the PRC, we must instead endeavor keep alive the flame of a massive political awakening.

Kwong Hiu Tong, a 19-year old university student, muses, “People used to say the structure of Hong Kong is very indifferent, but what I’ve seen here is Hong Kong people are very united.”

Wherever there is protest, wherever there is restless anger against the status quo, wherever there is large-scale civil disobedience fueled by a genuine passion, change is only a matter of time.