HONG KONG — Crowds of pro-democracy protesters thinned noticeably by Thursday morning after the Hong Kong government adopted a more conciliatory stance of trying to wait out the demonstrators.
Downtown streets that had been fairly crowded on previous nights began to empty late Wednesday, as many went home after days outdoors in heat that had been sweltering even by Hong Kong’s tropical standards. But many predicted that crowds would build again later on Thursday, as demonstrators returned after showers, sleep and hot meals.
“Compared to yesterday morning, I think there is a smaller crowd,” Venus Wong, a 22-year-old office worker, said as she sat in front of the local government headquarters with two friends, eating a McDonald’s breakfast at midmorning. “But I think more people will come back later in the day.”
But on Thursday, The People’s Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, issued the most severe official warning yet from Beijing about the protests, saying that Hong Kong could succumb to “chaos.”
In a front-page editorial, the newspaper accused the movement Occupy Central With Love and Peace — the group that led the pro-democracy campaigns that preceded the mass protests — of “blaspheming” the rule of law in the city.
“The actions of ‘Occupy Central’ have flagrantly violated the laws and regulations of Hong Kong, severely obstructed traffic and disrupted social order,” the editorial said.
Hong Kong’s chief executive and his advisers have decided, with support from China’s leaders, that their best strategy is to wait and hope that the disruption of everyday life will turn local public opinion against the demonstrators.
Leung Chun-ying, the chief executive, and his advisers do not plan to use force to disperse the demonstrations, but they also will not hold negotiations with protest leaders for now, said people with a detailed knowledge of the policies of the Hong Kong government and Beijing. Nor has there been any serious discussion of Mr. Leung’s resigning, as the protesters, who have numbered in the tens of thousands, are demanding.
Thursday was a traditional Chinese holiday that follows a lunar calendar, and it coincidentally came right after the National Day holiday this year. As a result, many people had expected the rallies to remain just as large on Thursday as on Wednesday.
Demonstrators were making a bigger effort by midmorning Thursday to minimize their disruption to commerce. Ken Lee, a 17-year-old hotel worker, sat on a gray plastic stool next to a row of safety cones — commandeered earlier from the police — that partly blocked the entrance to Queens Road, an important commercial street in Hong Kong. He explained that he was supposed to remove the cones not just for emergency vehicles that might come along, but also for delivery vehicles. Moments later, a newspaper deliveryman on a bicycle and a large bakery truck appeared. Mr. Lee politely moved the cones. The city’s leadership has concluded that it would be pointless for Mr. Leung to sit down with protest leaders, although a few informal contacts have been made with democracy advocates and a few of Mr. Leung’s friends have recommended negotiations. Beijing has given the Hong Kong government only a little room to negotiate the details of how the next chief executive will be elected in 2017 — the fundamental issue for the demonstrators.
“The government can tolerate the blockade of three or four or five areas and see how the demonstrations go, so the only way the demonstrators can go is to escalate it — spread it to more places, and then they cannot sustain it — or they will become violent,” said a person who is involved in the Hong Kong government’s decision-making.
An adviser to the government said the officials believed that Mr. Leung should bide his time. “The consensus is to wait and patiently deal with the crisis — it is not easy, but we shall do our best to resolve it peacefully,” the adviser said.
The strategy carries risks for the local and national governments because it in effect cedes momentum to the protesters and allows them to drive events. For China, continuing protests could inspire more dissent on the mainland, despite its censors’ attempts to block discussion of the events. Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group, said Wednesday that China had already detained or intimidated dozens of people for perceived transgressions like expressing support for the protesters on social media.
For the Hong Kong government, the risk is that the city’s image as a stable financial center will be harmed and that the government’s intransigence, rather than the protesters’ actions, will be blamed for the disruption.
Chan Kin-man, a co-founder of Occupy Central, said at a news conference Wednesday that Mr. Leung would not outlast the protests.
“If he believes that if he keeps on dragging on without answering to our demands then people will go away, forget about it,” said Mr. Chan, who added that protesters would skip work to remain in the streets. “If they are not afraid of tear gas, I don’t think they will be afraid of their supervisors and bosses,” he said.
The demonstration leaders have insisted that they will pursue only nonviolent civil disobedience. In terms of public opinion, violence would be risky for either side: When the outnumbered police resorted to tear gas on Sunday night, they provoked widespread anger, and more people came to protest on Monday. Yet after the police largely withdrew from the downtown district for the past three days, that indignation seemed to have attenuated by Thursday.
The lack of a cohesive leadership among the protesters, combined with the ambitious nature of their demands — Mr. Leung’s resignation, fully open elections for his successor — have prompted Hong Kong officials to conclude that the protest leaders are unlikely to accept half-measures in any negotiations.
The wait-them-out strategy appears to have the support of the city’s influential tycoons, many of whom are out of town during this holiday week. The tycoons derive the bulk of their income from leasing out their many commercial, office and residential properties, which demand Hong Kong’s famously high rents even as protesters restrict access to many businesses.
The hope of the Hong Kong government, and of Beijing, is that this economic pressure will turn owners of small businesses and other members of the middle class against the demonstrators. Officials hope that the public will see the protesters as nuisances, not heroes of democracy, as the students occupying Tiananmen Square in Beijing became in 1989 before China’s brutal crackdown.
“This is a Cultural Revolution revival, this is not Tiananmen — they think they are doing the right thing, so they can infringe on other people’s interests and therefore make the government kowtow to them,” said the person heavily involved in the government’s decisions.
President Obama and Susan E. Rice, his national security adviser, raised the protests while meeting Wednesday at the White House with Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister. In a statement, the White House said Mr. Obama and Ms. Rice had told Mr. Wang they were monitoring the situation and “expressed their hope that differences between Hong Kong authorities and protesters will be addressed peacefully.”