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After 75 days of protests, occupations and myriad clashes with police, Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement seems to have reached a dead-end. On Wednesday, police dismantled barricades at the last main occupation site in the city's Admiralty district and arrested some 200 protesters who refused to leave the site.

The protests were led by a coalition ofstudent groups and Occupy Hong Kong activists who captured the world's attention when they first took to the streetsin late September. They were angry with Beijing's decision to vet candidates in future Hong Kong elections -- a sign that China's one-party state had no interest in allowing full universal suffrage in the former British colony.The occupations that followed, which snarled traffic in three locations across the city, lasted longer than anyone initially thought they could.

They were organized, colorful, inspiring. Protesters fed and cared for each other, made artwork, ran teach-ins, shared tents. Solidarity marches took place in cities around the world. Their days ofstandoff with police, iconic umbrellas in hand, offered some of the more stirring scenes of resistance we've seen this year.The movement in Hong Kong seemed to signal the greatest challenge to Beijing's authority since the 1989 student protests that culminated in the crackdown at Tiananmen Square.

But as the sun rose on Thursday, Hong Kong's bustling thoroughfares were mostly absent of signs of entrenched dissent. The students, for all their efforts, had won no real concessions from either Beijing or Hong Kong's local government.

Yet protest leaders, many of whom are in their early 20s, are taking the long view.

"It definitely isnt the end of Hong Kongs democratic movement," said Lester Shum, a charismatic student leader. "It is unrealistic to think a single movement can change everything. Real civil disobedience is long term, so we must equip ourselves so we can organize better and rally more people from different parts of society."

The protests, as many observe, have laid down a generational marker. A considerable proportion of the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets over the past three months were fromthe first generation of Hong Kongers tohave grown up mostly under rule from Beijing, in conditions far removed from the hardships and economic uncertainties of an earlier era.

Benny Tai, an academicat Hong Kong University and one of the main leaders of Hong Kong's Occupy movement, offered this historical frame forwhat's happening in the Chinese territory in an op-ed for the New York Times:

These young people grew up in a vastly different Hong Kong from that of their elders, who were raised with much less prosperity and security. For many older people, survival was a daily challenge. Having had that past, older generations prioritize economic security and social order, even though many have transcended the tougher times of their youth.

The younger generations, meanwhile, came of age when economic and physical security were no longer major concerns. Their values reflect this: They focus much more on self-expression, sustainability, fairness and justice.

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WorldViews: Whats next for Hong Kongs democracy movement