Elizabeth Economy from the Council on Foreign Relations has a new op-ed about Hong Kong where she cites the University of Hong Kong’s support for the student protesters. She lists what she thinks are Beijing’s options, other than meeting all of the demands of the protesters:

Given these reasonably straight-forward demands, Beijing has a number of options. It can: enforce a harsh crackdown in Hong Kong in the hopes that brutally suppressing the protestors will stave off further reform demonstrations; confine the protests to a small area of Hong Kong and hope that they run their course: eventually the students will return to school and the occupy central protestors will return to work; remove Chief Executive C.Y. Leung, who has been a weak and unpopular leader from the outset as a stop-gap; or establish a committee including representatives of various Hong Kong political actors to consider the next stage of suffrage, post-2017.

It looks like the plan is for CY Leung to wait it out: Reuters reports an anonoumous source close to the Chief Executive saying,

“Unless there’s some chaotic situation, we won’t send in riot police … We hope this doesn’t happen,” the source said. “We have to deal with it peacefully, even if it lasts weeks or months.”