Mr. Leung spoke at Government House, the ornate mansion that served for more than a century as the official residence of British colonial governors and is now the chief executive’s residence. He said it had been remodeled recently so that he and his top aides could work there while protesters were besieging his offices downtown. “We didn’t miss a beat,” he said.

Mr. Leung was appointed in 2012 after being endorsed by a 1,200-member committee of prominent Hong Kong residents. Critics say that committee was packed with Beijing’s supporters, but Mr. Leung said it was also broadly representative, as required in the Basic Law, because it included people in different professions, economic strata, religions and other segments of society.

One group he said he wooed on the committee were the 20 members chosen by sports officials and coaches. “If it was an entirely universal suffrage election,” Mr. Leung said, “then the sports community would not count, they would not feature on my radar screen.”

He also raised again the suspicions of his government and of Beijing that “foreign forces” had played a role in the street protests, although he declined repeatedly to identify those forces or provide any examples. “I didn’t overhear it in a teahouse, and it’s something that concerns us,” he said. “It’s something that we need to deal with.”

A tenacious protest movement has spread beyond its initial student base to embrace discontented middle-class and blue-collar residents. But they face an unyielding Chinese Communist Party leadership, which has said the demonstrators have no chance of securing their demands.