Carrie Lam | In the line of fire

Hong Kong’s leader has backed Beijing’s moves to erode the city’s democracy

When Carrie Lam was in 2017 appointed as Hong Kong’s fourth Chief Executive — and the first woman to lead China’s Special Administrative Region (SAR) — her appointment by Beijing was greeted mostly with optimism. Ms. Lam, who was sworn in by President Xi Jinping a month before she turned 60, had over decades of working in Hong Kong’s bureaucracy garnered the reputation of a hard-working, effective and capable bureaucrat. Hong Kong’s civil servants often like to quip that the SAR, as Asia’s financial centre, may not make anything, but it makes things happen. Ms. Lam embodied that spirit. She acknowledged at her swearing-in that Hong Kong was “suffering from quite a serious divisiveness” and said her “priority will be to heal the divide”. Little would she have imagined that four years on, not only does that divide remain as far as ever, but Ms. Lam leaves behind a controversial legacy that many in Hong Kong say has permanently redefined what it means to be the Chief Executive (CE) of the SAR.