Quotes of the Day

Though no match for the missile launchers and shock troops that surround Beijing's Bird's Nest, security has been stiff at Hong Kong's Shatin complex. A tight knot of privately contracted guards have staked out the venue for the 2008 Olympics' equestrian events, as spectators watch horses undergo "dressage" and other genteel equine pastimes.

But the Olympics in Hong Kong have not gone off without incident. At the inaugural event on Aug. 9, Christina Chan, a young woman sitting in the front row of the stadium, was smothered by security staff after trying to unveil a banned Tibetan flag she and a friend had snuck past the guards. They hauled her out of the arena as some members of the crowd jeered and chanted for her to leave — her dissident act cut short before it even started. Another man wearing an anti-Olympics t-shirt was barred from even entering the venue, while a human rights protester briefly held up a sign he had smuggled through in his underpants.

Olympics or no Olympics, people in Hong Kong are generally not the dissenting kind. Chan, though, has been an exception — attracting consistent press attention in the run-up to the Summer Games. Slender and chicly dressed, she looks more like the girl whom you'd want to impress in seminar than a menace to society. But after staging a defiant protest when the Olympic torch passed through Hong Kong in May, the 21-year-old university student became Hong Kong's activist poster child. She also became the bête-noire of many who see her as a photogenic traitor to the Chinese people. Chan brushes aside the criticism as a symptom of Hong Kong's political apathy. "People here just feel helpless. They don't believe they can make a difference," she says.

Chan traces her political awakening to an early age: two, to be exact, when she and her father, a Hong Kong civil servant, marched in solidarity with the student protests that convulsed China in 1989. She has remained a vocal opponent of the Chinese Communist Party, but her biggest beef today is with what she sees as the ethno-centrism of China's majority Han population and its negative impact on Beijing-governed Tibet. "If you love China," she says, "you should care about the welfare of all its people, not just the dominant group." Greeting the Olympic torch in Hong Kong on May 2, she held up Tibet's snow lion flag amid a sea of People's Republic Red, which agitated pro-mainland supporters. Saying that it was for her own safety, police bundled her into a van and drove her away from the torch's route — a drama well-documented by local and international media.

Chan's agitprop may not be commanding much attention in Beijing's halls of power, but it has entranced Hong Kong's press. Images of the attractive undergrad confronting police had photographers' lenses aflutter in a city whose fringe dissidents and stodgy politicians are hardly red-carpet stars. But many see Chan as a naive, media-hungry dilettante, an impression only heightened after Facebook photos of her partying with friends in clubs were leaked to Chinese tabloids.

Nor has her resolute stance on Tibet won much support from people here who increasingly see their fate tied to the booming mainland. For many, China is no longer the communist bogeyman that it once was for those living in the former British colony. "Hong Kongers are caught in the fervor of the Olympics," says Ma Ngok, a political analyst at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "Even if they're not nationalist, they won't be inclined to be sympathetic toward Tibetans." Even Chan herself thinks self-determination for Tibetans is a "lost cause," but she intends to soldier on regardless.

When asked whether she'd consider entering Hong Kong politics, Chan quickly shakes her head. The vegan philosophy major has no appetite for the cynicism and compromises that make up political life, and would prefer to keep her ideals intact. "I'll always fight for what I care about," she says, and hopes, in the meantime, that she can use her 15 minutes to help other activists. After being booted out off the equestrian event, Chan passed on three tickets — and her much-photographed Tibetan flag — to members of Students for a Free Tibet, who managed to wave it around for a full minute before they were also shown the door. This time, the flag was confiscated. Chan doubts she'll get it back.

• Ishaan Tharoor / Hong Kong