HONG KONG — For the first time in years, Hui King-to chose not to take part in the candlelight vigil in Victoria Park here commemorating those who died during the Chinese government’s suppression of protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 4, 1989.

“I used to be a Chinese nationalist, and I considered myself Chinese,” said Mr. Hui, a 20-year-old business administration student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “I loved China the country — not the Communist Party — then. That was when I first started going to the candlelight vigil; I didn’t know better then.”

“But when I came to realize how all these rallies were useless, I threw away all these Chinese nationalist thoughts,” he said.

Hong Kong, where residents enjoy civil liberties denied to mainland Chinese, has been the one place on Chinese soil where the government in Beijing has not been able to airbrush the events of 1989 from the collective memory.