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Trouble flared as anti-government rallies escalated once again with crowds occupying roads outside the malls and nearby luxury hotels, including the Peninsula.
Scores of black clad, mask-wearing protesters chanted slogans including “Revive Hong Kong, revolution of our time”, and “Hong Kong independence”.
“Lots of people are shopping so it’s a good opportunity to spread the message and tell people what we are fighting for,” said Ken, an 18-year-old student.
“We fight for freedom, we fight for our future.”
At one shopping centre in Mong Kok district, also on the Kowloon peninsula, police used pepper spray to disperse some protesters, according to local media.
Some protesters were planning to march in Tsim Sha Tsui and countdown to Christmas, according to notices on social media.
The protests, now in their seventh month, have lost some of the scale and intensity of earlier violent confrontations.
The Civil Human Rights Front, which has organised some of the biggest marches involving more than a million people, has applied to stage another march on New Year’s Day.
Police have arrested more than 6,000 people since the protests escalated in June, including a large number during a protracted, violent siege at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in mid-November.
Many Hong Kong residents are angry at what they see as Beijing’s meddling in the freedoms promised to the former British colony when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
China denies interfering and says it is committed to the “one country, two systems” formula put in place at that time and has blamed foreign forces for fomenting unrest.
