Anti-Beijing protesters clashed with police in Hong Kong yesterday as they tried to surround the headquarters of China’s special autonomous region.

With numbers depleted after two months of confrontation, student leaders had told a crowd on Sunday at the main protest site outside government headquarters that they would escalate their campaign to change the selection process for candidates standing in the 2017 elections.

Just hundreds took part in yesterday’s exercise of lining up carrying umbrellas — symbols of the movement ­— before charging police lines and trying to block traffic on a main road.

Police armed with pepper spray, batons and riot shields responded, making dozens of arrests.

While the student demonstrators blocked traffic on the main road, they were stopped by police barricades from going down a side road to Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-Ying’s office.

The protesters, many wearing surgical masks, hard hats and safety goggles and chanting: “I want true democracy,” said they wanted to occupy the road to prevent Mr Leung and other government officials from getting to work.

Police charged the crowd at one point, pushing them back with pepper spray and batons after the crowd lobbed bottles and other objects.

They fell back later, letting demonstrators reoccupy the road, before charging again and clearing the protesters from some areas around the government headquarters.

Police Senior Superintendent Tsui Wai-hung said that 40 protesters had been arrested, adding that the authorities would not let the road, which is a major thoroughfare, remain blocked. The government said that 11 police had been injured in the exchanges.