Pushing negotiations with the protesters down to the working level of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region itself is tactically correct and within the markers of the "One Country, Two Systems" policy, the governing code endorsed by Deng.

But there is an operational problem: the Hong Kong government appears to have lost some moral - or at least persuasive - authority. Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-Ying, who took office in 2012 and early on made some good, tough policy decisions, has inadvertently ratcheted up the tension. The central authorities might want to note that the nominating process through which Leung assumed the highest office in Hong Kong will carry through to 2017 despite the welcome opening to universal suffrage.

The danger with that, however, is that Hong Kong, and the central authorities may never gain the kind of inspired leadership both deserve and the tricky "One Country, Two Systems" policy requires. Perhaps the process of selection should get a second look. A plenary session of review, perhaps a community at large process taking even many months, hosted at one of the universities in Hong Kong, would hardly seem more of a waste of time, energy and spirit than these stupid and dispiriting street circuses.

To this end, why not ask Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's first chief executive (1997-2005), to chair the review? With his timely and obviously good-willed calls for calm and reason, Tung, who, crucially, retains the central authorities' trust, offers Hong Kong residents very good reason indeed to listen to him with special attentiveness.

There may be some room for navigation between what the central authorities have proposed and what some Hong Kong residents prefer. Surely the time for a higher level of calm and consensus is ripe. The territory and the motherland should be working together to ameliorate the social and economic pressures threatening to pull Hong Kong down far more dramatically and dangerously than today's governance dispute. Hong Kong should get its act together and cut down on the self-flagellations.

The author is a scholar, specializing in Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and the author of In the Middle of China's Future.