Leung Preaches History to Students From Hong Kong Mansion

Sitting in the drawing room of a colonial mansion on a hill in central Hong Kong, the city’s leader Leung Chun-ying says his biggest problem trying to end street protests is simple: students don’t know their history.

Like a preacher brandishing a bible, Leung reads from his copy of the Basic Law, the city’s de facto constitution, pointing out his hands are tied when it comes to how universal suffrage can be implemented in 2017. The trouble for Leung, 60, is that his mantra isn’t washing with a generation that wasn’t born when the document was drawn up.