HONG KONG — The students sat quietly as soldiers goose-stepped into the Hong Kong high school’s auditorium, hoisting a Chinese flag. The M.C.s spoke in Mandarin, the language of mainland China, rather than Cantonese, the city’s predominant language. Then Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, took the podium, to extol the importance of patriotism in the city’s youth.

香港——学生们静静地坐在一所中学的礼堂里，观看士兵们迈着正步走进来升中国国旗。司仪说的是中国内地通用的普通话，而不是香港的主要语言粤语。接下来，香港行政长官林郑月娥走上讲台，大谈爱国主义对香港年轻人的重要性。

It was Mrs. Lam’s fourth visit to a school in recent weeks — a striking count for a leader who for two years had barely set foot on a campus. When anti-government protests engulfed the city in 2019, young people were among the most devoted participants, with high schoolers boycotting classes and forming human chains.

这是林郑月娥近几周来第四次访问学校，对一个在前两年里几乎从未踏足校园的领导人来说，这种频繁程度很惊人。2019年的反政府抗议活动席卷香港时，年轻人曾加入到最积极的参与者行列，中学生们罢课，手拉手组成人链。

But now, as the scene this month at the school, Pui Kiu, made clear, things had changed: The pro-China side — and by extension, Mrs. Lam — was back in charge. While a Hong Kong cliché long held that the chief executive serves two masters, Beijing and the Hong Kong people, the 2019 protests and the ensuing crisis crystallized that only one really mattered.

但当前情况已发生了变化，正如培侨中学本月出现的那一幕：亲中派——进而延伸到林郑月娥——已重新控制了局面。虽然香港以前的惯用说法是行政长官为两个主人——中央和香港人民——服务，但2019年的抗议活动和随之而来的危机已清楚地表明，真正重要的主人只有一个。

With that clarity, Mrs. Lam, 64, lately seems to be a woman reinvigorated, nothing like the leader who, at the height of the protests, disappeared from view for days on end.

有了这个清晰的认识，现年64岁的林郑月娥最近似乎重新焕发了活力，不再是那个抗议活动最激烈期间曾连续数天从公众视野中消失的领导人。

She has laid out an ambitious vision to “completely solve” Hong Kong’s housing issue, by building more than 900,000 units in the city’s largely undeveloped northern outskirts. She visited the city of Wuhan this month to strengthen Hong Kong’s economic and cultural ties with the mainland. She has given lengthy media interviews, smilingly dismissing concerns that the city is being crushed by Beijing.

林郑月娥提出了一个雄心勃勃的愿景：在香港北部基本处于未开发状态的郊区建90多万套住房，来“彻底解决”香港的住房短缺问题。为了加强香港与内地的经济及文化联系，她本月访问了武汉。她还接受了媒体的长时间采访，笑容满面地打消了人们对香港正在被中央政府击垮的担忧。

“I am very confident about Hong Kong,” she said at an awards ceremony last month. “I hope I were 30 years younger, so I could start to contribute to Hong Kong and benefit from a much better Hong Kong for a longer period of time.”

“我对香港很有信心，”她在上个月的一个颁奖典礼上用英文发表讲话时说。“我但愿自己再年轻30年，让我能开始为香港做贡献，并在更长的时间内受益于一个更加美好的香港。”

Mrs. Lam has dodged questions about whether she will seek to serve a second term in March, and her office declined to make her available for an interview. But observers say her demeanor points to a woman trying for five more years in power.

林郑月娥回避了她是否将在明年3月谋求连任的问题，她的办公室拒绝了时报的采访请求。但观察人士说，林郑月娥的举止表明，她在寻求再执政五年。

The draw is obvious. If she leaves office now, she will be remembered as the most unpopular chief executive in Hong Kong history, whose fumbling response to a popular uprising ushered in a drastic rollback of the city’s civil liberties by Beijing, a nosedive for Hong Kong’s global stature and an exodus of residents. Few in even the pro-Beijing camp are willing to defend her.

继续执政的吸引力是显而易见的。如果现在就下台的话，她将作为香港历史上最不受欢迎的行政长官为人们所铭记。她对民众抗议活动的笨拙回应，引发了中央政府对香港公民自由的严厉打压，导致了香港在全球地位的大幅下降，居民大批离去。甚至在亲北京阵营中，也没有几个愿意为她辩护的人。

But if Beijing allows her another term, she could try to rehabilitate her legacy, by tackling Hong Kong’s housing shortage, an issue that has stymied every leader before her, and accelerating integration with the mainland, which some argue would lift the city’s economy. No previous chief executive has completed two terms — surely an enticing challenge for Mrs. Lam, a self-avowed perfectionist.

但如果北京允许她连任的话，她可以试图通过解决香港的住房短缺问题（这个问题一直困扰着她的所有前任），以及加快与内地的融合（一些人认为，这将提振香港的经济）来恢复自己的政治声誉。此前还没有过完成两届任期的行政长官，对自诩为完美主义者的林郑月娥来说，这无疑是个诱人的挑战。

Even Mrs. Lam’s critics acknowledge that she is a ferociously competent administrator who may well be able to push through the housing and employment policies she has outlined. Perhaps more important, Beijing’s political purge has wiped out almost all opposition. On Sunday, Hong Kong will hold its first legislative elections since Beijing remade the system this spring to allow only government-approved candidates to run.

就连林郑月娥的批评者也承认，她是个非常能干的行政管理者，很有可能促成她提出的住房和就业政策。也许更重要的是，中央政府的政治打压已清除了香港几乎所有的反对派。北京在今年春天修改了香港的选举制度，只允许得到政府批准的候选人参选。周日，香港举行修改制度以后的首次立法会选举。

More in doubt is Mrs. Lam’s ability to convince Hong Kongers that Beijing’s vision is indeed better, and for whom. While Beijing asserts that economic gains will heal Hong Kong’s social rifts, and that closer ties with the mainland will foster natural patriotism, the pro-democracy camp insists that nothing will improve without a restoration of political rights.

更让人拿不准的是，林郑月娥是否有能力让香港人相信中央的愿景确实更好，以及对谁更好。尽管北京断言，经济增长将弥合香港社会的裂痕，与内地更紧密的联系将培养爱国主义本色，但民主派阵营坚称，如果不恢复政治权利，任何事情都不会改善。

That may be why, for all her rhetoric about the future, Mrs. Lam has also focused on recasting the past — in particular, what Beijing meant when it promised Hong Kong, a former British colony, semi-autonomy.

也许正因如此，虽然林郑月娥发表了种种有关未来的言论，但她也把注意力集中在重塑过去上，尤其是中央政府承诺让英国前殖民地香港享有的半自治权是什么意思。

Mrs. Lam once championed the direct election of the chief executive. (Currently, Hong Kong’s chief executive is selected by a committee of 1,500, in a vote overseen by Beijing.) Last month, she said it was “wrong” to think that Beijing “owes” Hong Kongers universal suffrage, even though it is laid out as a goal in Hong Kong’s mini-constitution.

林郑月娥曾支持直接选举行政长官（目前由一个1500人的委员会在北京的监督下选出）。上个月她却表示，认为中央“欠”香港人普选权的想法是“错误的”（尽管这是香港基本法中的一个目标）。

Mrs. Lam’s transformation was a “big irony,” said Jasper Tsang, a founder of Hong Kong’s largest pro-Beijing party. “Following the protests in 2019, her job now is to try to wipe out what we all believed before — including herself.”

林郑月娥的变化是一个“巨大的讽刺”，香港最大的亲北京政党的创始人曾钰成说。“2019年的抗议活动之后，她现在的工作是试图抹消我们所有人——包括她自己——以前相信的东西。”

For most of Mrs. Lam’s career, she advertised herself as a more moderate figure, committed to Beijing but open to compromise.

林郑月娥在职业生涯的大部分时间曾把自己宣传为一名更温和的人物，虽然遵从北京的安排，但也愿意妥协。

She rose to the top job in 2017 to succeed Leung Chun-ying, a Beijing loyalist whose hard line on pro-democracy protests in 2014 made him deeply unpopular. Mrs. Lam presented herself instead as an efficient workhorse — more administrator than politician. She spoke of her time as head prefect at her Catholic all-girls’ high school, where she cried on the rare instance she did not place top of her class. Her official biography listed all 20 government positions she held before becoming chief executive.

她于2017年接替梁振英担任行政长官。忠于北京的梁振英对2014年的亲民主抗议活动采取了强硬立场，这让他在香港非常不受欢迎。林郑月娥则以高效的工作方式示人——与其说是政客，不如说是一名管理者。她讲起自己在一所天主教女子中学担任“总领袖生”的故事时说，有一次，她罕见地没在班里拿第一名后哭了。她的官方简历上开列了她任行政长官之前担任过的所有20个政府职位。

She also leaned into her reputation as a negotiator who had led the government’s talks with student leaders during the 2014 protests. She seemed comfortable with Hong Kong’s traditionally close relationship with the West, once speaking of wanting to retire with her husband and two sons in Britain.

林郑月娥也利用过自己作为谈判专家的声誉，她曾在2014年的抗议活动期间，领导了政府方面与学生领袖谈判。她以前似乎对香港与西方国家传统上的密切关系感觉满意，说过想在退休后与丈夫和两个儿子去英国生活的话。

One of her earliest acts as chief executive was to appoint former opposition leaders to her cabinet. In March 2018, she attended a Democratic Party fund-raiser and donated nearly $4,000 — the first time a chief executive had publicly given to an opposition party.

她担任行政长官后的最早行动之一，是任命前反对党领导人为内阁成员。她曾在2018年3月参加香港民主党的一个筹款活动，还捐了3万港币，这是行政长官首次公开向反对党捐款。

“At the beginning, she did try to be more of a unifying figure,” said Dennis Kwok, a former pro-democracy lawmaker. “All parties were really trying their best to heal the division of society.”

“刚开始的时候，她曾的确想成为一名更团结人心的人物，”曾任立法会民主派议员的郭荣铿说。“所有政党都在为弥合社会分裂尽最大努力。”

It wouldn’t last.

但好景不长。

Mrs. Lam never expected the fury of the backlash to her proposal in 2019 to allow extraditions to mainland China. Public demonstrations, which began in response to the bill, ballooned into monthslong condemnations of Beijing writ large.

林郑月娥从未料到，她2019年提出的允许将犯人引渡到中国内地的议案，会遭到强烈反对。以反对该法案开始的公众示威，迅速扩大为长达数月、针对中央政府的大规模抗议活动。

If Mrs. Lam in the beginning of her tenure had seemed to thread the impossibility of serving two masters, that proved unsustainable. In June 2020, the central government, having lost patience with the Hong Kong government’s response, bypassed Mrs. Lam’s administration to impose a sweeping security law.

如果说林郑月娥在上任之初似乎处理好了“一仆二主”这件不大可能的事情的话，后来的事实证明，那是不可持续的。2020年6月，中央政府对香港政府处理抗议活动的方式失去了耐心，绕过林郑月娥的政府，对香港施加了涉及范围广泛的国家安全法。

In the following months, dozens of opposition leaders were arrested, a pro-democracy newspaper was forced to close and the United States government imposed sanctions on Mrs. Lam.

在接下来的几个月里，数十名反对派领导人被捕入狱，一份民主派报纸被迫停刊，美国政府对林郑月娥实施了制裁。

Yet Beijing’s intervention would prove a lifeline for her. No longer was there any question of whether the chief executive answered to Beijing or the Hong Kong people. Now, Mrs. Lam just had to play along.

但事实证明，中央政府的干预为她提供了一条生命线。香港行政长官听命于民还是听命于北京，已不再是个问题。林郑月娥现在只是为中央担任配角。

“There are all sorts of ironies in life,” she said in a recent interview with the South China Morning Post about the protests. “You thought that was the end of the world, and suddenly it’s not. It was the beginning of a bright future.”

“生活中有各种各样的讽刺，”她最近在接受英文报纸《南华早报》采访时谈到抗议活动时说。“原以为那是世界末日，但突然之间它不再是，而是一个美好未来的开端。”

Mrs. Lam’s rhetoric now mirrors that of the Chinese Communist Party, with its mix of strident denunciations and bureaucratic jargon. At news conferences, she sniffs at the West’s “so-called democracy.” In her annual policy address this year, she singled out the Communist Party’s authority over Hong Kong affairs, unlike earlier addresses in which she did not mention the party.

林郑月娥如今的言论已与中共的别无两样，夹杂着猛烈的斥责和官僚术语。她在新闻发布会上对西方的“所谓民主”嗤之以鼻。在今年的年度施政报告中，她专门提到中共对香港事务的权威，与她在以前的施政报告中不提中共的做法不同。

Charles Ho, a pro-Beijing tycoon who has criticized Mrs. Lam’s handling of the protests, said she would have been fired or demoted if she were a mainland official. But after the security law, Mrs. Lam worked hard to earn back Beijing’s good will, he said.

亲北京的大商人何柱国批评过林郑月娥处理抗议活动的做法，他说，如果林郑月娥是内地官员的话，可能会被解职或降级。但何柱国说，在香港国安法出台后，林郑月娥已在为重新获得北京的好感而努力工作。

“Whenever she makes speeches, she is thanking the central government or mentioning Xi,” Mr. Ho said, referring to Xi Jinping, China’s leader. “She learned to please.”

“她每次发表讲话时都会感谢中央政府或提习近平，”何柱国说。“她学会了取悦。”

Future debates about Mrs. Lam’s legacy will turn in part on the question of how much choice she had in her fate. Was she a willing servant to the party’s quest to crush Hong Kong’s freedoms? Or was she doing the best she could in the face of Beijing’s authoritarianism?

今后有关林郑月娥会留下什么政治印记的辩论，在一定程度上将转向她对自己的命运有多少选择的问题。她是在心甘情愿地为中共寻求压制香港自由的目标服务，还是在北京的威权主义面前尽力而为呢？

Either way, Mrs. Lam appears to relish the new state of affairs. In July, for example, when retreating from a campaign promise to extend anti-bribery regulations to cover the chief executive, she explained that the leader’s accountability was to Beijing.

无论答案如何，林郑月娥似乎很喜欢这种新状况。例如，今年7月，林郑月娥收回了她参选行政长官时做出的将反贿赂法扩大到香港最高职位的承诺，她解释说，因为向行政长官问责的权力在北京。

“She is, sort of, above the executive, the legislature and the judiciary,” she said.

“行政长官在某种程度上高于行政部门、立法部门和司法部门，”她说。

Mrs. Lam has been liberated by her full embrace of Beijing, said Allan Zeman, a real estate developer and adviser to Mrs. Lam. “You can’t please everyone,” he said. “She has her priorities straight now.”

“她已从彻底接受北京中获得了解放，”林郑月娥的顾问、房地产开发商盛智文(Allan Zeman)说。“一个人不可能取悦所有人，”他说。“她现在有了自己的优先事项。”

Nowhere has her confidence been clearer than in her proposal to build a “Northern Metropolis” across the border from the Chinese city of Shenzhen, replacing what is currently a patchwork of towns and industrial areas with a high-tech hub that would house 2.5 million people. In Mrs. Lam’s telling, the project would ease the housing crunch and bind the city to the mainland all in one.

最能体现林郑月娥信心的，是她提出的在与中国城市深圳接壤的地方开发“北部都会”的建议上，用一个可以容纳250万人的高科技中心来取代目前的松散镇落和工业地片。照林郑月娥的描述，该项目将缓解住房短缺问题，并将香港与内地结合在一起。

Similar proposals have stalled for years because of opposition from villagers and environmentalists. But Mrs. Lam said that was no longer a problem, because the security law had restored “social order.”

由于村民和环保人士的反对，类似的方案已搁置了多年。但林郑月娥说，反对已不再是问题，因为国安法已经恢复了“社会秩序”。

Her pitch might work. Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing newspapers, often seen as bellwethers of the central authorities’ opinion, have published editorials praising Mrs. Lam’s recent speeches. No other chief executive candidates have stepped forward, perhaps signaling approval from Beijing, said Willy Lam, a Hong Kong political scholar.

她为自己做的宣传也许会奏效。香港的亲北京报纸已发表社论称赞林郑月娥最近的讲话，这些报纸经常被视为中央政府意见的风向标。香港的政治学者林和立说，目前还没有其他人站出来竞选行政长官，这也许是中央支持林郑月娥连任的信号。

“There are many people willing to bend over backward to please Beijing,” he said. But Mrs. Lam “has a credible track record in using the civil service to attain specific goals mandated by Beijing.”

“有很多愿意竭尽全力取悦北京的人，”林和立说。但林郑月娥“在使用行政部门来实现北京规定的具体目标上有可靠的记录”。

Indeed, Mrs. Lam seems to have been increasingly relegated to anticipating — or racing to keep up with — the central government’s demands.

的确，林郑月娥似乎已将自己越来越多地降格为预测——或紧跟——中央政府的要求位置上。

In the fall, officials from the Central Liaison Office, Beijing’s arm in Hong Kong, fanned out across the city to visit thousands of low-income residents, in a highly publicized show of sympathy for their living conditions. Mrs. Lam appeared caught off guard: She acknowledged to reporters that she “did not realize” the scale of their outreach until she read about it in the newspaper.

今年秋天，中央政府驻香港的代表机构中联办的官员到香港各地走访了数千名低收入居民。这个被广泛报道为中央政府对低收入者的生活条件表示同情的做法，似乎给林郑月娥来了个措手不及：她向记者承认，在报纸上读到有关报道之前，她“没有意识到”中联办官员的走访范围之广。

A week after those visits, Mrs. Lam descended on several low-income households herself.

一周后，林郑月娥本人也走访了几户低收入家庭。

Mrs. Lam, for all her new bravura, seems aware of how tenuous her apparent political resurrection is. Her recent public appearances have been tightly scripted. In August, she held her first town hall in two years — with 90 of 106 attendees handpicked by the government.

尽管做出了新的出色表演，但林郑月娥似乎知道自己的政治复活是多么脆弱。她最近的公开露面都是经过严密安排的。今年8月，她举行了两年来的首次市政厅式的会议，106名与会者中有90人是政府精心挑选出来的。

Mrs. Lam’s visit to Pui Kiu this month was similarly controlled. The school is known to be pro-Beijing. After Mrs. Lam spoke, she presented plaques to donors, smiling with each for a few seconds. She presided over the opening of the school’s fitness room, posing for photos behind a row of stationary bikes.

林郑月娥本月对培侨中学的访问也经过了同样的严格控制。该校有亲北京的名声。林郑月娥发表讲话后，向给学校捐款的人颁发了奖状，还给了每位捐款人几秒钟的微笑时间。她主持了学校健身房的剪彩仪式，在一排健身自行车后面摆样子拍了照。

She did not speak to any students. Then, she strode to a car nearby and disappeared inside.

她没有与任何学生说话。然后大步走向等候在附近的汽车，消失在车里。