Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests reached San Francisco this week when Mayor Ed Lee came under fire for raising the Chinese flag over City Hall to honor China National Day.

Even as thousands of protestors occupied central Hong Kong to call for democracy, Lee did the honors on Wednesday for China's National Day celebrating 65 years of Communist Party rule. China's consul-general in San Francisco, Nansheng Yuan, stood at Lee's side as he raised the Chines flag at City Hall.

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The city traditionally honors nations with local consulates by raising their flag on a San Francisco City Hall balcony on the nation's birthday or national holiday. 

The gesture was met with disdain by some 150 pro-democracy protestors who later assembled at the city's Hong Kong Economic Trade Office to show solidarity with the Umbrella Revolution on the streets of Hong Kong.

Speaking for the pro-democracy crowd, a local information technology engineer, Charles Cheung, told SFGate.com that Lee's flag-raising ceremony was inappropriate. Cheung said he hoped Lee would support the pro-democracy protestors and understand the seriousness of the situation.

Lee raised more eyebrows by saying later that day he wasn't "fully up to speed" about the protests. He said he hadn't studied the situation and compared Occupy Central in Hong Kong to the Occupy San Francisco movement, adding that people had to study the situation for a time to understand what people were trying to say.

Lee has visited China several times trying to get Chinese companies to set up shop in San Francisco. He called Hong Kong a special place and said negotiations between Hong Kong people and China should be handled delicately.

The flag raising that coincided with the pro-democracy turmoil in Hong Kong was in stark contrast to previous positions taken by the city on human rights issues. San Francisco political leaders traditionally have taken very public stances supporting human rights issues.

In 1986, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a law prohibiting the city from doing business with South African companies due to apartheid. They also banned business with Myanmar companies after Burmese military officials refused to deal with pro-democracy protestors in that nation.

When Chinese soldiers killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Tiananmen Square democracy advocates, supervisors voted, and then-Mayor Art Agnos quickly signed a measure to put a copy of the Tiananmen protestors' "goddess of democracy" statue at Portsmouth Square at the center of San Francisco Chinatown.

TagsSan Francisco, Hong Kong, Hong Kong pro-democracy, mayor ed lee, china national day, occupy central, umbrella revolution