Hong Kong’s #OccupyCentral protests generate over 1.3 million tweets

Protests in Hong Kong intensified on Sunday as young people flooded the streets to demand democracy reform, free from the shackles of mainland China. According to Twitter (NYSE:TWTR), those protests have so far generated over 1.3 million tweets from participants, eyewitnesses, and supporters from around the globe.

As seen in the interactive chart created by Twitter’s number-crunchers (embedded below), things reached a peak around 11:30 PM local time on Sunday as Hong Kong police responded with tear gas to the peaceful crowd of tens of thousands of protestors at several points across the city. That peaked at a flow of 735 tweets per minute related to the Hong Kong protests.

That’s not the most intense Twitter storm ever, but it still shows strong interest in a student-led rally against authorities. Twitter’s record for tweets per minute goes to this year’s World Cup final, which reached a peak of 618,725 tweets a minute.

Today, the pro-democracy protests are entering their fifth night.

Here’s the chart from Twitter:

One of the most popular tweets so far comes from WSJ’s Troy McCullough, who attached a photo of the protestors the morning after picking up trash from the night’s protests.

Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters get tear gassed, but still pick up their own trash. http://t.co/mke0Kij31X pic.twitter.com/JWNcTfiRCK

— Troy McCullough (@TroyWSJ) September 29, 2014

See: Instagram blocked in China as democracy reform protests sweep Hong Kong

McCullough also tweeted this remarkable photo from Monday night’s gathering, when the crowds held up their phones in an impressive display of lights and manpower:

Beijing says: "Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong." Some people apparently didn't get the memo. http://t.co/mke0Kij31X pic.twitter.com/PW6I7e9Fz4