NOWHERE in the world, it seems, are demonstrators so hard to count as in Hong Kong. This was true even under British rule. Under Chinese sovereignty since 1997, Hong Kong’s arithmetic has got even harder. When untold thousands took to the streets on July 1st for what has become an annual march demanding full democracy for the special administrative region of China, the police estimated 98,600 people took part. The organisers reckoned more than five times as many braved the heat to raise their voices against the local government. In comparison the estimates of attendance at the “pro-China” demonstration on August 17th are in a rather tighter range: 111,000, said the police; 193,000 the organisers. The police of course work for the government, and the Hong Kong government is itself "pro-China". But in this case, other complexities entered the calculations: how many of the protesters were genuine? How many took to the streets because they had been paid to do so? (The sizeable South Asian contingent, for example, seem unlikely to have been donating their day off for the cause.) How many were treated to lunch or “encouraged” by their employers to take part? And how many were mainland tourists, on what must have seemed an unusual coach tour?

Yet an unknown proportion of the unknown number of protesters was perfectly genuine. The aim of the demonstration was to oppose “Occupy Central with Peace and Love” (OCPL), a movement that threatens to occupy Hong Kong’s central business district, bringing traffic and commerce to a halt, if China refuses to meet its demands for genuine “universal suffrage” in the election for Hong Kong’s chief executive in 2017. So the demonstration was not so much “pro-China”, though Chinese flags were much in evidence, as “anti-disruption”.

Many people in Hong Kong oppose OCPL’s means if not its aims. They have been scared successfully by their government and business lobbies with apocalyptic warnings of the economic impact of such a confrontation. And some wonder about a campaign that seeks to preserve perhaps the most important feature that makes Hong Kong different from the rest of China—the rule of law—by a campaign of law-breaking.

Pollsters say that, although OCPL commands a lot of support in Hong Kong, it does not have a majority on its side. It held a “referendum” on the format of the 2017 election, in which 800,000 people took part. In response, its opponents organised a petition against it, and claimed 1.4m signatures, though again many of these were of dubious origin.

The issue over which OCPL is making its threat is nearing a head. In the last week of August the standing committee of China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), is to make a ruling about the 2017 election. It is almost certain to reject OCPL’s demands that candidates for chief executive can be nominated by the public or by political parties, before facing the election by universal suffrage that Hong Kong is promised as an “ultimate aim” by its constitution under China, the Basic Law.

Instead, the NPC will insist on the Basic Law’s provision that chief-executive candidates have to be approved by a “nominating committee”. This is likely to be more or less the same as the “election committee” which chose the current chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, in 2012. It is a body of some 1,200 people, whose composition is designed to ensure that in the aggregate it does what China wants.

Even this, however, will not trigger the occupation. Rather, it is the “threshold” chief-executive candidates will have to cross. Recent hints have suggested that they will only be eligible to stand for popular election if they win the endorsement of at least 50% of the Nominating Committee. China would not only be able to ensure that its candidate won; it would also be able to block any candidate it did not like from standing.

If that is indeed the decision, then OCPL would feel forced to take action, even though its organisers would really rather not. “We don’t want to occupy,” says Benny Tai Yiu-ting, a cerebral and cheerful law professor, who is one of its leaders.

It would seem in China’s interests, too, to avert the occupation. It could play for time, for example, by leaving issues such as the nomination threshold and permissible number of candidates for future consideration. Or it may prefer to provoke a confrontation with its critics now, and try to turn the debate from one about democracy—which it would lose—to one about the rule of law, which, bizarrely, it might win. Either way, Hong Kong seems doomed to months of ugly confrontation, as its politics grows ever more polarised.

(Picture credit: AFP)