Carrie Lam: Leader who helped usher in the era of Beijing's dominance in Hong Kong

She is a career bureaucrat. After being selected by the small pro-Beijing committee that fills the position, she became Hong Kong's first woman leader in 2017.

Acknowledging the increasing frustration with how Hong Kong was being run and the calls from Hong Kongers for democracy she said in her victory speech, "My priority will be to heal the divide." 

She had also vowed to leave her post if she ever lost "mainstream opinion". 

Five years later, she exits office with record-low approval ratings, leaving behind a city of 7.4 million citizens with even less say in who leads them.

Lam, who was born into a low-income household, excelled at her Catholic school and afterwards attended Cambridge University.

She started her career in the colonial civil service and later became the director of the social welfare department after the handover, establishing a reputation as a workaholic.

Lam was the government's number-two leader throughout her predecessor's tenure, which saw student-led democratic protests in 2014.

Her own first two years in government were rather uneventful. However, Hong Kong erupted in 2019 when Lam attempted to rush through a measure that would have allowed extraditions to party-controlled courts in mainland China.

Months of large, and at times violent, democracy protests ensued as a result of a massive backlash.

Lam was caught privately addressing a group of business leaders midway through the upheaval that she had caused "unforgivable havoc."

However, she argued that her hands were tied, because she "served two masters": Hong Kongers and Beijing.

"She could have decisively reversed, retreated or revoked. Yet she missed the chance and when she decided to give up, it was too late," said Lau Siu-kai, a senior Beijing aide, while talking to AFP.

"None of Hong Kong's chief executives had a high level of popularity, but none of her predecessors faced something as politically risky as she did," he added.

The protests were eventually crushed when Beijing imposed a national security law criminalising dissent. 

Beijing also introduced "patriots only" election rules, which meant that anyone running for office must now be vetted for their political loyalty.

The security bill has resulted in the detention of approximately 170 activists, opposition politicians, professors, and journalists.

Many civil society organisations and local news sources critical of the administration have been shut down.

Hong Kong is currently 148th in the press freedom rankings

Veteran commentator Johnny Lau in an interview with AFP commented that "In the past four years, except for fulfilling Beijing's demands, Lam failed to win Hong Kong people's recognition in her other works." 

"Many policies rolled out by her government, even some that really benefit the general public are resented and rejected."

The last two years of Lam's tenure were defined by a coronavirus pandemic crisis that walled Hong Kong off from the rest of the world and resulted in one of the world's highest mortality rates.

The city maintains some of the world's harshest pandemic restrictions in lockstep with China.

When the highly transmissible Omicron strain broke through in December 2021, the zero-Covid approach faltered.

Despite Hong Kong receiving abundant supply, the great majority of the approximately 8,000 deaths were older persons who had not been vaccinated.

However, Lam said it was "not the right time" to assess her legacy as she announced her retirement on Monday.