They cited cost, noise pollution, customs and border control complications, and pre-existing rail links as main reasons for the opposition.

[7] Just before the approval of the budget at around 18:00, an initial group of people attempted to storm the Legislative Council Building, but was blocked by the police.

[6] Armed with mobile devices and communicating via Twitter, protesters quickly moved into 6 separating strategic positions on the streets around the LegCo building, blocking all the exits.

[7] On 15 February 2010, and shadowing the tradition of Lau Wong Fat of the Heung Yee Kuk, about 20 post-80s generation anti-rail representatives joined the annual HK kau cim tradition at Che Kung temple, Sha Tin to draw three divination sticks for the year of the Tiger.

[citation needed] Yet, while activists worked on ways to solve the problem, they found many inconsistencies with the government's plan and decided to oppose the rail link as a whole.

The rail link was regarded as sacrificing the interests of the common people to a small minority of economic elites.

With regular demonstrations, the collection of signatures and various other forms of protest, they attempted to raise awareness among the population and to exert pressure upon the respective politicians.

[15] Meanwhile, Mirana Szeto, a member of the Stop XRL Alliance compared the civil opposition to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing some 20 years earlier.

Through its discourse on a more inclusive developmental approach, an encompassing form of democracy[17] and the decolonisation of the territory it has developed during its various urban campaigns, the movement is regarded as striving for the emancipation of both the city and the citizen.

Cultural critic Law Wing-Sang regarded the opposition to the Guangzhou-Hong Kong Express Rail Link as the first step of the collapse of the dominant ideology and analysed the movement as having initiated the process of decolonisation of Hong Kong, where local economic elites and colonizers have historically worked hand in hand with each other, in what he termed collaborative colonial power.

[18][19] Ma Ngok, another prominent political observer, also supported the protesters, and regarded the "black box" process through which the project of the Rail Link was arrived at as epitomising the structural governance problem of the Hong Kong administration.

The government's HK$2 billion compensation for affected residents was approved 30–0, as pan-democratic lawmakers stormed out in protest.