Calum MacLeod

USA TODAY

BEIJING — Thousands of Hong Kong college students are skipping classes this week to join a civil disobedience campaign to protest the Chinese communist government's refusal to allow free elections for the semi-autonomous city.

After a march and three days of large rallies, student leaders threaten to surround government buildings Thursday if Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying refuses to meet with them to discuss China's controversial plans for the 2017 election for his position. High school students have been invited to join the strike Friday.

In August, the central government disappointed many of Hong Kong's 7.2 million residents by barring an open choice of candidates for the election. Instead, it is permitting only candidates hand-picked by a Beijing-friendly committee to run for Hong Kong's top governing post.

"We must fight back, democracy now," shouted student leader Lester Shum during a march Wednesday, as students took their protest to the city's commercial center for the first time. "Hong Kong is my home ground, (Beijing) is not representing me," he said, according to Reuters.

Another campaign group has vowed to occupy central district, Hong Kong's financial heart, possibly starting Oct. 1, China's National Day.

Similar political protests in mainland China could result in detention and imprisonment. In Hong Kong, the former British colony returned to Beijing's control in 1997, a "one country, two systems" arrangement preserves civil liberties that aren't present in the rest of China.

A University of Hong Kong survey of 1,000 city residents released Tuesday, found more than half have "no confidence" in "one country, two systems," the lowest level of confidence since the university began tracking the issue in 1993.

China's electoral decision "completely shut down the hope of democracy, so people feel the need to do something different," said Chen Yun-chung, a cultural studies professor at Lingnan University. He helped co-ordinate this week's "teach-in" by 108 university teachers, at a harbor front park, to deepen striking students' "political awakening".

"There is a lot of frustration in this city right now. Some are cynical — 'it's impossible to go out against the communists and the NPC'," China's rubber-stamp parliament, Chen said. But the "stronger, more repressive tactics by Beijing make many moderates ready to take a step further, and these are average Hong Kong people, not the usual suspects," he said.

About half of his students still show up for class. "Some don't care about politics," said Chen, who believes the student movement and the Occupy Central campaign will develop serious momentum. For many students "it's a first step of civil disobedience," he said.

More will follow, promised politician Andrew To, chairman of Hong Kong's center-left League of Social Democrats party. "If authorities do not respond to the student demands, they will escalate their actions, and may continue the class boycott and attract more people to occupy Central," he said.

As a Hong Kong student representative, To witnessed Beijing's 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests for democracy, which prompted a brutal crackdown by China. Today he advises students to copy some Tiananmen tactics, including demonstrations and hunger strikes. A new, Chinese dissident-led "We The People" petition urges President Obama to prevent a second Tiananmen Massacre from happening in Hong Kong.

"The U.S. government should do more to exert pressure on Beijing to give democracy and freedoms to the Hong Kong people," said To, the petition's local coordinator. "Hong Kong is a gateway to spread democracy across the whole of China," he said.

China requires the Hong Kong government to remain a bureaucracy and agent of Beijing that makes no political demands on the central government, said Bao Pu, a Hong Kong-based political commentator who was a student protestor in Beijing in 1989. The Occupy Central movement, very active in recent months, has forced Beijing to directly face public sentiment in Hong Kong for the first time since 1997, he said.

"The student leaders are aware Beijing won't change on political reform, and there's almost zero chance to get actual changes this time, but they're still doing this for the educational and long-term evolutionary impact," he said.