Today’s critics in Beijing are correct, however, in suggesting that Britain, which took over Hong Kong in 1842, came late to the democracy game. Britain’s democratic impulses in the 1950s came after it had been ejected from India and the country was trying to head off revolts in several colonies. “It was at a time when Britain was introducing democracy in many of its colonies around the world, and the idea was Hong Kong should be treated the same,” said Danny Gittings, an assistant professor of law at the University of Hong Kong.

After the rebuff from China, Britain did not make a concerted push for popular elections until the 1990s, when it was on its way out. Britain hoped democracy would calm a citizenry anxious about its impending return to Communist China, historians say, and ensure the stability of British investments.

In his public statements at the time, Mr. Patten said he thought Hong Kong residents deserved a role in local governance. “People in Hong Kong are perfectly capable of taking a greater share in managing their own affairs in a way that is responsible, mature, restrained, sensible,” he told reporters in 1992.

It was Mr. Patten’s recent defense of the protesters’ goals that prompted the People’s Daily attack. The newspaper’s editorial acknowledged his role in promoting democracy in the 1990s but said his aim was to create “a not inconsiderable gulf between the mainland and Hong Kong.”

Image The ex-Hong Kong Gov. Chris Patten in 1997. Elections he oversaw were voided by China, then expanded. Credit... Eric Draper/Associated Press

The recent drumbeat of commentaries in the Chinese news media that have sought to shape the historical narrative may have inadvertently strengthened the resolve of many Hong Kong activists, who say such heavy-handed efforts remind them of the political and press freedoms they are fighting for, liberties absent in the rest of China.

“I was personally very stunned that Beijing could unabashedly tell lies in the face of so many Hong Kong people, because Hong Kong people can vividly remember the democracy struggle between the former British government and the Chinese government,” said Ming Sing, a political scientist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.