Unfortunately for some in both the anti- and pro-government camps, the stresses and strains in shoving and shouting are taking a heavy toll, mentally and physically. A little blood has now been shed and Asia’s finest, the Hong Kong police, stand accused of using unnecessarily high-handed tactics firing tear gas canisters to disperse crowds at the start of the protests and, more recently of brutality, with claims of them beating up and kicking a handcuffed protester on the ground.

On the surface, the one burning and divisive issue is universal suffrage, involving methods for the selection of the chief executive in 2017 and the formation of the Legislative Council in 2016.

However, below the surface is the fact that Hong Kong people are divided among themselves into two camps: the realists and the idealists. Put in another way, they are the doers and the dreamers.

China’s strongman Deng Xiaoping was the final architect of Hong Kong’s return to China by Britain. In a clash of wills, the diminutive Deng poker-played his way to victory over Britain’s Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher.

Along the way, his “one country, two systems” policy made some concessions with an eye on making it appeal to Taiwan. He promised that Hong Kong would remain unchanged for 50 years, allowing people a capitalist system, which would enable them to enjoy continuing the sport of kings and to go dancing.

Yet Deng and his successors left out one factor in their calculations: Hong Kong people are Chinese in race, but differ from their counterparts on the mainland in mindset, attitude and culture. This is not to say that most did not want to shake off the British colonial yoke in 1997. But nearly all felt their ways were different – even superior – than those on the mainland.

In the early days of the handover and before, mainlanders were derided as “Ah Charns” or country bumpkins. This is not so different from the biases exercised by northerners and southerners against one another on the mainland.

Through the years, China has opened up to the world and, in doing so, mightily expanded its economic and political might. With thick wads of renminbi in their hands, mainlanders provide the economic mainstays for Hong Kong property and shop owners and they now take revenge by calling the locals “(Hong) Kong Charns”. Things have turned full circle.

Hong Kong people, in particular the younger generation, are trying to keep their own “uniqueness” and are getting increasingly upset by the encroaching ways of the mainlanders.

This does not mean they are not “patriotic”. In fact, it would appear that loving China is a characteristic gene in the blood of all Chinese. Even after the second world war, this was so evident that it troubled countries where Chinese had migrated. Premier Zhou Enlai had to tell overseas Chinese to pledge allegiance to the country of their adoption.

In a sense, the current protest movement in Hong Kong seems to be more an attempt to keep the Hong Kong way of life, mindful that a new chief executive might be too “mainlandised” to keep the place as it is, with its unbridled capitalism, law and order and still relatively uncorrupt ways.

The students are in the forefront of this mindset, but they forget that, as part of the mainland, Hong Kong has to pay attention to what Beijing says; what it says goes, because that is enshrined in the Basic Law, the mini-constitution agreed upon by China and Britain, in the handover. Hong Kong is given a certain degree of autonomy but Beijing has the final say in all things.

Deng defined the Basic Law as such and his successor, president Jiang Zemin, spelled it out in a meeting with the first chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, on his continuation for a second term. Hong Kong reporters at the 2000 meeting asked about support and nominations and Jiang became angry, coming out with his famously worded outburst, “Too young, too simple, sometimes naive”.

His words are applicable in the present context to the protesters, mainly the students.

To label them as planning a revolution or engaging in one seems a bit out of the way at the present stage of affairs. That they may be used at a later stage is another matter. Which is why it is so vitally important for all protesters to go home – the students to their classrooms, the police to their barracks and the others to wherever they come from. And now. Because in the Beijing mindset, a revolution has to be quelled by violent means.

There has to be a lull in the protests. This can come about if “face” is given all round. In other words, protest and government leaders must meet and engage in open dialogues – and keep the dialogues open, in full knowledge of the constraints acknowledged right at the start of the handover in the Basic Law.

Let there be integrity, faith and commitment, on all sides. That is the only way for Hong Kong to keep going forward.

C. P. Ho is a newsman turned businessman