While the nightly numbers at protest sites have dwindled to the hundreds for weeks, the true measure of the movement's momentum had been its ability to generate a huge response following attempts to clear or tamper with protest camps.

But in a two-day operation, police tactical units acting on court orders dismantled barricades and removed tents from Mong Kok, prompting heated scuffles through to the early hours of Thursday. In all, 169 arrests were made, including that of student protest leaders Joshua Wong and Lester Shum. Both have been released on bail, charged with obstructing court bailiffs, and banned from the Mong Kok area - where traffic ran smoothly on Friday morning for the first time since the protests began.

Student protest organisers, hoping to galvanise demonstrators, have threatened to occupy key government buildings. But the mood at the main protest encampment outside government headquarters in Admiralty, while remaining determined, is decidedly sombre compared to the early air of euphoria which drew crowds in the tens, and sometimes hundreds of thousands. They were motivated by what they considered heavy-handed use of force by police, including the discharging of tear gas, to quell surging demonstrations on September 28.

Protesters who have been at the front line since day one are now openly anxious that a court order will be made against the main Admiralty campsite, and that they will be powerless to prevent a thorough clean out.

"It will be a real pity if we have to go," said Hobee Wong, a soft-spoken 18-year-old first-year engineering university student with blue highlights in her hair and rimmed glasses perched on her nose. "Police were so bad in Mong Kok [on Wednesday] but not that many people came out [to protest in response] this time."

Ms Wong said while her friends were still supportive of the movement's push for universal suffrage, only a small number continued to keep vigil at protest sites, discouraged by the government's lack of willingness to engage.

"I guess it's because we've been at this point for so long but the government still doesn't listen to us," she said.

Public opinion polls also show that support for the occupation has waned, deepening a divide among protest organisers between those who want to try to escalate protests versus those calling for a tactical retreat to give them time to formulate a better plan.

Media mogul Jimmy Lai, who publishes the widely-read Apple Daily, has been a fixture at the Admiralty protest camp. His newspaper is a strident critic of the Chinese Communist Party and has unabashedly cheered on the pro-democracy protests – but Mr Lai is among those calling for a rethink.

"I don't think people are losing hope," he told Fairfax Media. "But if we retrench and retreat from here I think people will have greater hope because after everything sinks in people will see that this is actually the only way we can get universal suffrage.

"We can't just expect to finish and achieve what we want in one battle, this is a war. People are realising this and the consensus is slowly, slowly forming among people."

The trigger for the Hong Kong protests has been the Chinese central government's decision to reject calls for the public nomination of candidates for the city's next chief executive elections in 2017, the first to be held via a direct vote. Instead, the Communist Party government will effectively be able to vet future candidates through a nomination committee.

But at the heart of the movement is an anxiety that mainland China's growing economic and political influence since the 1997 handover is eroding Hong Kong's way of life. Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, in particular, is routinely criticised for being too close to the Communist Party and Hong Kong's business elite, rather than speaking for the city's ordinary folk.

The situation is mirrored in Taiwan, where student protesters stormed and occupied Taiwan's legislative Yuan in March, angered by the lack of consultation at a cross-straits trade agreement.

Anxiety over the ruling Nationalist Kuomintang party's alignment with mainland China will play a factor in an expected voter backlash in municipal elections on Saturday. "What the Umbrella Movement has revealed about [Chinese President] Xi Jinping's draconian views on democracy has some impact in Taiwan because they don't want to see what is happening in Hong Kong happening to Taiwan," political analyst Willy Lam said.

In Hong Kong, regardless of the timing and manner in which the sit-in protests end, the social divide – broadly between those who want a more democratic future versus those who see no benefit to confronting the Communist Party – has only deepened.

"Those who are willing to come out and fight for democracy are always the minority," Mr Lai, the publisher, said. "But everybody [else] knows that we're fighting for them also."