Confrontation in Hong Kong is turning ever uglier

“SOCIETY HAS been pushed to the brink of a total breakdown.” So warned a senior policeman on November 12th, after a 23rd successive weekend of unrest on Hong Kong’s streets, with no sign of the usual weekday lull. A day later the central government also put it starkly. Hong Kong, it said, was “sliding into the abyss of terrorism”. The past few days had been grim indeed—a protester dying of an injury apparently suffered while running away from police, a man being shot at close range by an officer and someone being doused by protesters in flammable liquid and set on fire. This week police for the first time battled with students on campus.

Some observers had thought the protest movement might begin to fizzle out amid widespread anxiety about its impact on the economy and in the absence of any sign that it might achieve the goal of full-fledged democracy. But the death on November 8th of the fleeing student, Alex Chow, fanned the flames. On the following day, a Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters gathered across the city to mourn. On Monday protesters tried to enforce a “general strike” in response to Mr Chow’s death by blocking streets and railway lines and throwing petrol-bombs at trains. The shooting that day of an unarmed protester who, police say, was trying to grab an officer’s gun increased the tension.