HONG KONG — They are on the front lines of every demonstration, dressed in black T-shirts and pumping their fists as they march through Hong Kong’s sweltering streets. They organize on encrypted messaging groups and hand out helmets and goggles at rallies. When police fired tear gas at them, they chased the smoke-emitting canisters and doused them with water.

Hong Kong’s youth are at the forefront of protests this month that have thrown the city into a political crisis, including a vast rally Sunday (June 16) that was perhaps the largest in its history. Organizers contend that close to 2 million of the territory’s 7 million people participated, calling on the government to withdraw proposed legislation that would allow extraditions to mainland China.

For the many high school and university students who flooded the streets, the issue is much bigger than extradition alone. As they see it, they are fighting a “final battle” for some semblance of autonomy from the Chinese government.

Students take part in a strike at Tamar Park in Hong Kong on Monday, June 17, 2019. Protesters continue to demand the complete withdrawal of a contentious extradition bill and, increasingly, the departure of Carrie Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong. Photo: New York Times

“The extradition law is a danger to our lives,” said Zack Ho, 17, a high school student who helped organize a boycott of classes. “Once this passes, our rule of law would be damaged beyond repair.”

They are a generation that has no memory of life under British rule, but they have come of age amid growing fears about how the encroachment of China’s ruling Communist Party — and an influx of people from mainland China — are transforming Hong Kong and what they believe is special about it.

Such fears stem from the ousting of opposition lawmakers, the disappearance of several individuals from Hong Kong into custody in the mainland and the intensifying competition for jobs and housing in a city with soaring inequality. Many young protesters see the extradition bill as hurting the territory’s judicial independence — in their view, the last vestige of insulation they now have from Beijing’s influence.

Youth activism in Hong Kong had ebbed in recent years, after protests demanding a direct say in the election of the territory’s chief executive ended in failure in 2014. The most prominent leaders of what became known as the Umbrella Movement, or Occupy Central, were jailed, and their legions of young supporters were left bitterly disenchanted.

But the extradition legislation pushed by Hong Kong’s chief executive Carrie Lam, has re-energized young people. Residents express worry that Beijing will use new extradition powers to target dissidents and others who run afoul of Communist Party officials on the mainland.

The young people driving the Umbrella Movement fought for the cause of universal suffrage, said Leung Yiu-ting, student union president of Hong Kong Education University. But the extradition fight, he added, is “a matter of life and death.”

Compared with older generations, young people in Hong Kong feel less affinity with mainland China and are more likely to see themselves as having a distinct Hong Kong — as opposed to Chinese — identity. Beijing’s efforts to grapple with this have backfired; when officials tried to impose a patriotic education curriculum in schools in 2012, young people led the protests against it.

That was the beginning of this generation’s political awakening, which has accelerated along with the erosion of the civil liberties promised to Hong Kong upon its return to Chinese government in 1997. Those freedoms have long set Hong Kong apart from the mainland, and as they have begun to fray, young people say they feel the threat more sharply.

No one has emerged as the face of the current youth movement as Mr Joshua Wong, then 17, did during the Umbrella protests five years ago. (Wong was released from prison Monday after serving a month of his two-month prison sentence.)

That is at least in part because of fear. “Who’s going to be quite so willing, openly, to take six years of jail as the prize for the protests?” said Ms Claudia Mo, a pro-democracy Hong Kong lawmaker, referring to a sentence handed down in 2018 to Mr Edward Leung, a local activist, for his role in a 2016 clash between protesters and police.

Joshua Wong, who became the face of the Umbrella Movement protests in 2014, is released from prison in Hong Kong on Monday, June 17, 2019. Young people are at the forefront of protests that have thrown the city into a political crisis. Photo: New York Times

Instead, organizers have operated behind the scenes by spreading messages about protests and other acts of civil disobedience through social media, word-of-mouth and secure messaging apps like Telegram.

One result was that high school and university students turned out in large numbers at a mostly peaceful march June 9 and also occupied a highway Wednesday outside the Legislative Council. Medical students and other volunteers provided first aid and free supplies from makeshift tents.

“They are compromising our future, and for what?” Mr Terrence Leung, a recent college graduate, who like many others was demonstrating Wednesday in a black T-shirt and a surgical mask, said of the pro-Beijing lawmakers who championed the extradition bill.

But in both protests, some among the young demonstrators challenged authorities with force. The demonstrators tried to occupy the area outside the Legislative Council — or, in Wednesday’s case, tried to storm the complex — with force, pushing metal barriers and tossing bricks, bottles and sticks at riot police officers.

Police responded with pepper spray and batons. On Wednesday, police also fired 150 canisters of tear gas and, for the first time in decades, rubber bullets. Videos of officers beating protesters and firing volleys of tear gas that sent thousands fleeing drew wide condemnation across the city.

Public anger only grew when Ms Lam compared her response to the opposition with that of a mother with a willful child.

Linda Wong, a barrister who organized a rally attended by women who described themselves as mothers opposed to how police had responded to the young protesters, disagreed with Lam’s characterization.

“They came out not for personal interests but for the greater ideal of Hong Kong,” Wong said. “A good mother shall listen to her own child, and apparently Carrie Lam refuses to do so.”

Police said Monday that 32 people have been arrested since Wednesday’s event, including five for rioting.

“Fear is striking in all of our hearts,” said Leung, the student union president, referring to the possibility of being prosecuted.

But in both protests, some among the young demonstrators challenged authorities with force. The demonstrators tried to occupy the area outside the Legislative Council — or, in Wednesday’s case, tried to storm the complex — with force, pushing metal barriers and tossing bricks, bottles and sticks at riot police officers. Photo: New York Times

Another risk is that the leaderless nature of the movement raises the possibility of more bloodshed. Analysts say that if demonstrations descend into violence, officials would have an easy excuse to prosecute young protesters, discredit them as radicals or attack them with a vengeance.

“If I were them, I would be cautious not to press the advantage too far,” said Mr Andrew Junker, a sociologist at Chinese University of Hong Kong who has studied the Umbrella Movement.

Faced with another enormous protest Sunday, Ms Lam issued a public apology for causing so much anger over the extradition law. Her apology came a day after she promised to shelve the plan indefinitely but not withdraw it.

This was perceived as too little, too late, and it especially enraged younger protesters, who were bewildered that Ms Lam seemed deaf to the concerns of more than 1 million demonstrators.

“Sometimes I think to myself, is it because I have not done enough? What else could have been done?” said So Hiu-Ching, 16, a high schooler who attended a student strike at a park near government offices Monday morning.

“I go home and cry,” she said, “but after that, I have to get up and try to rally more people.” THE NEW YORK TIMES