When I meet 18-year-old Joshua Wong in a café in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong, a short walk away from where last year’s large protests took place, he asks for an orange juice and starts WhatsApping busily on his phone.

Despite his reputation as a firebrand, today he seems rather reflective. Fewer than 24 hours after this interview, Wong was summoned to the Hong Kong Police Headquarters to be formally charged for his role in the pro-democracy protests last September, when tens of thousands of protesters joined him in standing up to the Chinese government over the city’s broken electoral system.

Last month he toured the UK at the same time as the Chinese president Xi Jinping, delivering passionate speeches on democracy and activism at the Oxford Union, the London School of Economics and other universities.

He tells me he found it difficult to unite Hong Kong in protest. Flooding busy shopping districts such as Mong Kok and Causeway Bay with protesters made headlines and put pressure on Beijing, but they also took their toll on residents, workers and small business owners, whose livelihoods suffered.

“Of course, you will affect lives,” Wong reflects. “But Occupy still needs to happen. Occupy is a civil disobedience action that affects the daily operation of society. It makes society less stable that the government expects it to be.”

It is a radical stance which stems from Wong’s frustration with the people of Hong Kong, the majority of whom were unwilling to take direct action for democracy. After two months of protests, polls found that there was a large majority opposing the occupation.

“If we just have labour strikes for three million people, everything, even complete independence or self-determination, we can get. However, we can’t pay this price [for going on strike]. This is the problem.”

He could soon pay the price for his own actions. His trial for charges relating to the protests, during which he and other demonstrators climbed into a fenced-off part of the government headquarters, is due to begin in February.

It is worth asking, though, if popular images of Wong and the pro-democracy movement are somewhat oversimplified. It is true that the central goals of the protests (also referred to as the Umbrella Movement, and sometimes the Occupy Movement) were electoral reform and democracy, and this received very positive coverage abroad.

However, there was also an ugly undercurrent of xenophobia during the protests. The same popular tabloid, Apple Daily, which ran a horrific full page advert depicting the mainland Chinese as locusts two years ago, was one of the Umbrella Movement’s biggest supporters. 

Many young activists in Hong Kong hold very strong views on migration reminiscent of nationalist movements elsewhere, such as UKIP in Britain. Isn’t this unusually illiberal for a student-led democracy movement?

Joshua Wong thinks of himself as an exception to this trend. Relatively relaxed on the question of immigration, he doesn’t think the current cap on migrants from mainland China (150 per day) is too high.

“Actually, for the mainlanders to come to Hong Kong is not really a problem,” he tells me. “But the problem is, who decides?”

But when I ask him about the immigrants’ impact on local culture, his attitude suddenly hardens. “In every place you should have your local language and use it…You need to have your own culture to back up yourself. So what is the difference behind Hong Kong and mainland [China]? We need to answer this question.”

Despite feeling strongly about his Hong Kong identity, Wong refuses to describe himself as a nationalist. “I would not use these terms. I think, whether you identify yourself to be a socialist, democrat or nationalist…that is not really important.”

Wong is a far cry from the polished elite who rule Hong Kong, though this is changing. He has had plenty of interview practice by now, and has been studying politics at university for a year. During our conversation, his wary eyes often wander to my recording device on the table, and his answers sound much smoother than when foreign journalists first began to swoop around him.

Wong has a surprise in store. He is well-known for making fiery, rebellious statements against the authorities. “People should not be afraid of their government,” he said a year ago, quoting the film V for Vendetta, "the government should be afraid of their people." But today, Wong speaks of the Chinese Communist Party with astonishing pragmatism, and dismisses the simplistic picture of politics he was taught at school.

“The teacher will tell me that Communist is really the worst. And socialist is really the worst. But, after I [became] involved in social movement, it’s not really true, from my point of view.”

Does that mean that he could accept a democratically elected Communist Party in Hong Kong? “I do not support this party, there are a lot of reasons – but if it’s run in an election that is fair and equal and [the] Communist Party win, I think it’s still reasonable and I will accept and respect [it].”

Wong says that he would describe himself as a social democrat, and supports a standard 40-hour working week and a slightly higher minimum wage. But he doesn’t see political ideology as a part of the struggle for electoral reform, and tells me that his organisation of student activists, Scholarism, has no clearly defined ideology. “You need to be on the ground, discuss with the general public. It is not necessary to tell them you come from which side.”

Usually defiant, today he seems somewhat subdued at the prospect of facing trial. How does he feel about the possibility of a prison sentence?

“I think I may go to jail. But of course, not going to jail is better. Because, I am afraid if I go to jail…I need to defer [my university course] again. I deferred in the first semester from last year September to this year January already. If I need to go to jail, I need to defer again.”

“I don’t want to have six years as an undergrad.” For the first time during the interview, he laughs.