On Sunday, pro-Beijing marchers swamped Hong Kong’s Victoria Park and walked the 4 kilometers to Central to protest plans by a radical group called Occupy Central to close down the city’s business district later this year if China refuses to grant universal suffrage for the 2017 elections, as promised under the 1997 Basic Law.

Asia Sentinel interns Chen Yajiao and Wu Hanqi accompanied the marchers in broiling weather conditions.

These pictures represent a few of their impressions. What they do confirm is that this was hardly a spontaneous outburst of patriotism.

The organizers, unlike those who put together the July 1 march that drew hundreds of thousands of people supporting liberalized elections, had to pay some marchers and passed out t-shirts to anybody who wanted them, including Indonesian maids.