ARTICLE: Hong Kong Protesters Seek Democracy, AP, January 1, 2010

This is why this decade will be most interesting on the question of Hong Kong as a lead goose on internal democratization of China:

The Chinese government ruled in 2007 that the territory cannot directly elect its leader until 2017 and its legislature until 2020.

Protesters aim to speed that up, but simply by keeping up the pressure, it makes it that much harder for Beijing to renege on this pledge down the road, and these elections will have a major precedent effect on the transition from 5th to 6th generation leadership set for 2022.