Thousands of students were expected to stage a walkout across Hong Kong's universities on Monday, kicking off mass demonstrations. The boycott comes in response to Beijing, which wants to exercise more influence over the island region's leadership.

"This is a turning point," the Hong Kong Federation of Students chairman, Alex Chow, told news agency AFP.

"The government has to respond to what so many Hong Kong people are calling an unfair election system,” he added.

Last month, China's top legislative body, the National People's Congress, announced that a new "broadly representative committee" would nominate candidates for Hong Kong's next chief executive in the 2017 election.

The move was also seen as a reversal of China's promise that the 2017 elections would be the first since the handover to be decided by universal suffrage.

Democracy activists, led by the group Occupy Central, held an unofficial referendum in June in which 800,000 people took part. The majority of those voters said they supported reforms that would allow public nominations for the elections.

Students were expected to begin the mass protest on Monday at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Occupy Central and the Hong Kong Federation of Students have also announced a series of events and demonstrations to take place for the remainder of the week.

kms/ksb (AP, AFP, dpa)