The first half-hour of my conversation with Yvonne Leung was inspiring. We were sitting together in a university canteen as the 21-year-old student leader related how Hong Kong’s UmbrellaDEMOCRACY? movement would persevere, even if its 79 days of protests last year had led nowhere.

Miss Leung, who is head of the student union at the University of Hong Kong, told me about the awareness campaigns under way and the hope that the flawed electoral reform that sparked unrest might not win enough votes in the legislature.

She is one of the lesser known heroines of Occupy Central, the movement that paralysed Hong Kong and challenged China’s communist rulers. For months, students occupied the streets but failed, in the end, to derail reform that would allow Hong Kong’s residents to elect their leader, the chief executive, in 2017 – but only from a list of candidates vetted by a committee drawn from the city’s elites.