HONG KONG — Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday in a peaceful rally that descended into clashes inside a shopping mall as the police tried to clear out a small group of younger demonstrators.

The march was the protesters’ latest effort to spread their movement across the semiautonomous Chinese region and the first major test of public sentiment since the city’s embattled leader announced that an unpopular bill was “dead” but stopped short of withdrawing it.

Dark rain clouds loomed as the large mass of protesters marched through the Sha Tin area of the New Territories, a region of Hong Kong near the border with mainland China, and shouted slogans like “The police knowingly broke the law” and “Fight on, Hong Kong.”