Hong Kong made international headlines in 2014 when thousands of people occupied major roads to demand the introduction of meaningful democracy, which they believed had been promised during the transfer of power from liberal British to illiberal Chinese control. The protest, dubbed Umbrella Revolution, eventually lasted for 79 days and involved almost a quarter of the population. Among those who participated, the movement fostered a strong civic identity centered around the local political community that should be defended and improved. However, as the protests failed to achieve the goal of “real universal suffrage”, divisions between moderates and radicals grew. The fact that liberal democracy was made impossible due to the political control by a domineering illiberal regime strengthened a budding “localist” movement which called for full autonomy, a return to British control, or even independence. While this was a logical extension of the failure of democratization as democracy requires some form of self-determination, it deeply worried the Chinese government in Beijing which perceives these calls as a fundamental threat to national unity. As a consequence, the persistent deliberalization process accelerated, increasingly threatening the very foundations of the Special Administrative Regions’ separate political system. Nevertheless, while Hong Kong’s status as a liberal enclave within China continues to be eroded, it is unlikely that the Chinese government will take full control and completely abandon the “one country, two systems” principle which is important for the Chinese as well as the Hong Kong economy. Instead, it is more likely that the liberal authoritarian regime will be replaced by an illiberal polity that merely maintains the facade of two different systems.