Hong Kong protests: Carrie Lam says resignation ‘never discussed’ with Beijing after leaked recording suggests she wanted to stand down

Chief executive hits out at ‘totally unacceptable’ reporting of private meeting, but does not refute authenticity of audio

Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam has insisted she never offered to resign, after an audio recording was leaked in which she appeared to suggest she would quit as chief executive if she could.

Weeks after reports that China has “repeatedly refused” the chief executive’s offers to tender her resignation, Reuters released a recording on Monday in which Ms Lam could be heard saying: “If I have a choice, the first thing is to quit.”

Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, Ms Lam did not deny the authenticity of the recording, although she said it was “totally unacceptable” that comments from a private meeting with business leaders had been leaked.

She instead suggested the comments were being taken out of context, and that in the business leaders’ meeting she was trying to explain her thought process for staying on as leader.

Hong Kong has entered its 14th consecutive week of protests, with thousands of students and some school pupils again boycotting classes on Tuesday despite the end of the summer holidays.

What started out as a series of demonstrations against an unpopular extradition bill has expanded into a broad-based protest movement seeking to defend Hong Kong’s democratic freedoms from perceived encroachment by Beijing.

In the audio recording, Ms Lam could be heard saying she felt it was unforgivable for a chief executive to have presided over such a crisis. She suggests the weeks of unrest were her fault for introducing the now-suspended bill, and that her preferred course of action would have been “having made a deep apology… to step down”.

During the chief executive’s weekly media briefing on Tuesday, she was asked repeatedly why Beijing would not let her step aside – one of the key demands of the protest movement.

But Ms Lam said that “not resigning was my own choice… I have not given myself the choice to take an easier path and that is to leave”.

“I have never tendered a resignation to the central people’s government. I have not even contemplated to discuss a resignation,” she said.

Ms Lam was selected to be leader in 2017 from a shortlist of pro-Beijing candidates, in a vote by Hong Kong elites. Protest leaders in the city are now demanding that the process of electing a chief executive be opened up – something the Chinese government said in 2014 it would not allow.

Protesters at Hong Kong University on Tuesday criticised Ms Lam for failing to listen to any of what they call their “five demands”.

Aside from the matter of the chief executive’s position, they are for the complete withdrawal of the extradition bill, an amnesty for all arrested demonstrators, for police to stop categorising rallies as “riots” and for an independent inquiry into allegations of police violence.

“I think Carrie Lam doesn’t have much power,” Poon, a 21-year-old engineering student said. “Whether she can step down or not, it doesn’t matter. Chief executive is still chosen by the central government. What matters is if she refuses to respond to the five demands. She’s an irresponsible leader.”

The school and university boycotts follow on from one of the worst weekends of violent clashes in Hong Kong in recent weeks.

After the police attempted to ban a planned march on Saturday, protesters set up and burned barricades, and threw petrol bombs. On Sunday, thousands gathered to block key roads and public transport links to Hong Kong airport, and smashed turnstiles and other public property at an MTR station. Police retaliated on both days with water cannons, tear gas and baton charges.

More than 1,100 people have been detained since the unrest began, including prominent activists like the 2014 Umbrella Movement leader Joshua Wong.

Mr Wong was held and then bailed on Friday in what his party, Demosisto, called an attempt to intimidate the protest movement.

On Tuesday, he spoke at an event in Taipei, calling on the Taiwanese people to hold their own demonstrations as they face their own pressures from China.

“A lot of people in the past have said ‘today Hong Kong and tomorrow Taiwan’,” Mr Wong said, a reference to China’s suggestion that Taiwan could be ruled by Beijing under the same “one country, two systems” principle that it applies to Hong Kong.

“But I think the most ideal thing we’d say is ‘Taiwan today, tomorrow Hong Kong’. Hong Kong can be like Taiwan, a place for freedom and democracy.”