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In what some will see as a veiled threat, he also said that Hong Kong had been "lucky" that Beijing had not yet felt the need to intervene in the stand-off. "There is a thin line between what we do in Hong Kong and what (leaders in) Beijing think or might think they have to do," he remarked.

China has offered Hong Kong the chance to vote for their next chief executive in 2017. But only those vetted by a committee expected to be loyal to Beijing will be allowed to stand a proposal activists have labelled a "fake democracy".

The protests are taking place against a backdrop of rising inequality and soaring housing costs which leave many young people with little prospect of renting, let alone buying, their own homes in a city with one of Asia's widest wealth gaps.

Though largely peaceful, the rallies saw increasing violence in the past week as police tried to clear some of the intersections.

The talks are scheduled to begin at 10am GMT on Tuesday and will be broadcast live on TV. Demonstrators say large screens will be erected at the protest camps.

But there are fears that neither side will find common ground, with both sides seemingly unwilling to compromise potentially setting up further clashes between protesters and police.

"I'm seriously worried about tonight," pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo told AFP.

"If this is just going to be a political show where political animals form a political circus people will think: 'Well, let's just take to the streets again'."

Analysts and democracy lawmakers said Leung's comments on the poor were likely to inflame tensions further.

"It reflects the distrust the authorities have of the people ... and it also reflects how the current political system is biased for the rich and against the poor," said pro-democracy lawmaker Fernando Cheung.

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Democracy will lead to 'poor' dominating politics, say Hong Kong's China-backed governor