The annual duty visit comes just three months ahead of the March 27 chief executive poll, and Lam has yet to indicate if she intends to seek a second term. Before leaving for the capital on Monday, she shrugged off any suggestion the trip would include a pitch to the Communist Party leadership for a possible re-election bid.

At the beginning of Wednesday’s meeting, Li also said Beijing fully supported the Hong Kong government and its chief executive, and was willing to help the city’s economic development.

“We back Hong Kong in safeguarding its role as a global finance, trading and shipping hub,” he said.

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But Li also said the city must “proactively connect” with the nation’s overarching development strategies.

“This will offer a wider platform for Hong Kong’s economic development and help the nation’s reforming and opening up … we hope the Hong Kong government can continue to contain the pandemic and foster economic recovery,” he said.

“[The administration] must also make efforts in improving people’s livelihoods, so the vast majority of residents can have a greater sense of gain.”

Li did not elaborate on how the administration could best accomplish that, but in a speech in July, Xia Baolong, director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO), said he hoped the city could gradually “bid farewell to subdivided flats and ‘cage homes’,” referring to tiny, cramped living spaces rented by some of the city’s poorest residents.

Xia also said the Hong Kong leadership must take practical action that provided tangible benefits residents could “see, touch and feel”.

Wednesday’s full sit-down was not open to the media, with only a handful of journalists from hand-picked outlets allowed to cover its first five minutes.

With the Covid-19 situation largely stable, Hong Kong’s economic recovery became more entrenched in the third quarter, with real gross domestic product growing 5.4 per cent year on year. Full-year government projections for 2021 indicate GDP will grow between 5.5 per cent and 6.5 per cent year on year.

Hong Kong’s unemployment rate also eased further, to 4.1 per cent, for the rolling three-month period between September and November, down 0.2 percentage points from August to October.

While a significant improvement since the jobless rate from December last year to February hit 7.2 per cent, the highest since 2004, 158,000 people remained unemployed.

Carrie Lam headed to Beijing for annual duty visit on day after Hong Kong election

The trip comes on the heels of Sunday’s Legislative Council election, which Beijing followed up with a white paper praising its strategy of developing a brand of democracy in Hong Kong that was “in line with its realities” and guaranteed to leave “patriots” in charge.

Li did not touch on either the election or the white paper in his publicly available remarks, only giving assurances that Beijing would continue to implement its “one country, two systems” governing principle in Hong Kong.

“The central government will continue to implement the principles of ‘one country, two systems’ and ‘Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong with a high degree of autonomy’ in a comprehensive and accurate manner,” he said.

“We will continue to improve the systems and mechanisms related to the [Chinese] constitution and the Basic Law,” Li added, referring to the city’s mini-constitution.

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While the premier offered no specifics, last year’s imposition by Beijing of a sweeping national security law and subsequent radical overhaul of the city’s electoral process was cast as a move to “improve systems”.

In her brief remarks, Lam thanked Li for his acknowledgement and said she was glad she had been able to travel to Beijing this year.

It is customary for the chief executive to visit Beijing in December to brief the country’s leaders on the city’s political and economic developments of the past year.

Lam’s trip was postponed last year because Hong Kong was battling a fourth wave of coronavirus infections, with the daily caseload at times exceeding 100 a day. She instead took part in a virtual meeting with Xi and Li on January 27.

Li’s face-to-face meeting with Lam on Wednesday was attended by some of China’s most powerful officials, including Vice-Premier Han Zheng, who heads the Communist Party’s leading group on Hong Kong and Macau affairs, state councillor and foreign minister Wang Yi and public security minister Zhao Kezhi.

HKMAO chief Xia, his deputy chief Zhang Xiaoming and Beijing’s Hong Kong liaison office director, Luo Huining, were also there.