The Popularity of Tung Chee-hwa from All AnglesBack

Note: This article represents the view of the author and not the University of Hong Kong. An abridged version in Chinese is published concurrently by Hong Kong Economic Journal.

Every now and then, the popularity of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa steals the limelight. This is no big deal because, in open societies, the ultimate leader is always under the ultimate scrutiny of their people. Tung and the people of Hong Kong should be proud of it.

Tung, of course, may not agree, because his plummeting popularity rating has somewhat become a constant hassle to his rule. He must have been annoyed by the many impolite questions fired at him by the journalists. When our Beijing leaders are around, any question on his mandate is embarrassing and politically incorrect. Tung must have hated the pollsters and journalists.

Because our Chief Executive is not popularly elected, measuring his popularity could become an academic question. While this would be the subject for another article, it should be noted that using the 0-100 rating scale to measure the popularity of our political figures was a deliberate choice made by the author twelve years ago, because it doesn't make much sense to use hypothetical voting or other questions commonly used in other parts of the world to measure our leaders' popularity. Our former Governors, our Chief Executive, and practically all heavy-weight political figures in Hong Kong, do not have the people's mandate.

Nevertheless, with our twelve years' experience in monitoring our leaders' performance using the same rating scale, our data has a lot to say about the governance crisis facing Tung. Questions like "Which demographic group supports him more?" "Which supports him less?" "How do they vary across the years?" can all be answered by some in-depth analyses of the data collected.

Up to this date, the Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong headed by the author has conducted 196 separate surveys on Tung's popularity, capturing a total of 149,772 respondents. To answer these questions, the author has teased out the following data sets from the archive:

a)

One set of data comprising 50,288 respondents interviewed between August 2001 and April 2003. There are 21 months of data involved, and it concurs with the development of the recent governance crisis.

b)

Another set of data comprising 26,967 respondents interviewed in the months of April and October since 1997. There are 13 months of data involved, gathered across 6 years. It gives a longitudinal view of Tung's popularity on 6-month intervals.

For both data sets, we analyzed Tung's rating across the following demographic variables: respondents' gender, age, education attainment, and occupation. For the first data set, we also analyzed respondents' place of birth. Here are our major findings:

1)

Where the overall population is concerned, and using the benchmark of 50 as an indication of popularity crisis, Tung marginally touched on the danger zone between September and November 2001, as people started to grumble near the end of his five-year rule. However, he managed to recover himself as he engineered for his second term of office, admitting some mistakes and making some pledges. He even mentioned conducting opinion surveys in order to become more responsive to public opinion. However, that "honeymoon" period ended in July 2002, after his hasty introduction of the accountability system and the occurrence of the "penny-stocks fiasco". Since August 2002, his popularity rating has dropped below 50 marks. Hard bit by the Financial Secretary's car-purchase scandal and the outbreak of atypical pneumonia in March, his rating dropped below 45 marks after that.

2)

According to our experience, a political figure with less than 50 marks can be said to have fallen into negative popularity, while a score of less than 45 marks can indicate credibility crisis. Using this analysis, Tung has been negatively popular among the general public since August 2002, and in March 2003, he has sunk into a credibility crisis.

3)

Across the five different sets of demographic variables mentioned, Tung is consistently more popular among females, people of age 50 or above, those with primary education, housewives and students, and new immigrants. On the other hand, he is least popular among males, people between 21 and 39, those with tertiary education, professionals and semi-professionals, and those born in Hong Kong. However, in April 2003, with the exception of new immigrants, those 60 or above, and those with primary education, Tung was in a credibility crisis among all demographic groups.

4)

For simplicity sake, we can look at the three demographic groups which have given Tung the most unfavourable ratings, namely, the "professionals" in the broad sense, people with tertiary education, and those 30-39. For the first group, Tung only scored 34.7 marks in April, he never scored more than 45 since August 2002. In other words, the professionals have distrusted Tung for a very long time, and their latest appraisal of Tung was incredibly unfavourable. As for the most educated group, probably because of its overlapping with the professionals, the pattern was more or less the same, but their latest rating of Tung in April was 37.2, which was significantly higher than that of the professionals. Finally, for those 30-39, they gave Tung a positive popularity rating for a short period between January and May 2002, and from Oct 2002 onwards, never more than 45.

5)

Some equally inspiring pictures can be painted if we look at the other extreme - the three demographic groups which have supported Tung most. For new immigrants who have settled in Hong Kong for less than 7 years, our data shows that they have never given Tung a less than 50 rating. However, in the first few months of 2002, their rating of Tung was almost 70 marks, but it gradually dropped to 50.4 last month. For those of age 60 and above, their rating of Tung was above 50 until last month, it dropped to 48.9 marks. Finally, for those with primary education, their rating of Tung was above 50 until March 2003, when it dropped to 47.5 marks. It further went down to 46.7 in April.

6)

Where demographic analysis is concerned, the picture is almost the same irrespective of whether we look at Tung's popularity over the past 21 months, or strategically over a 6-year period. The structure of opinion is very stable, and they practically co-vary with each other. The only marginal exception seems to be those 18-21, which started off in April 1997 as being much more critical of Tung than those 50-59. By April 2003, they became relatively less critical. Put it in another way, those of age 50-59, who were once in strong support of Tung, have become much more critical of him in the past 12 months or so.

All in all, there is little doubt that Tung is not just experiencing negative popularity, he is facing a credibility crisis. Across our 19 sub-groups, all except three gave him a less than 45 score in April 2003. His plunge in popularity is equally spectacular among all groups.

There are, of course, many different interpretations to these findings. The Chief Executive himself would certainly have his own views. If he is brave enough, he would face these figures head-on, and starts working with those who dislike him most - the professionals, the educated, and those between 30-40 - the so-called "yuppies". Alternatively, he may choose an easy way out to start with the uneducated mass, and perhaps the housewives, who have a relatively better impression of him. There are always two sides of a coin, and the worst scenario would be for him to work with only his 800 allies, or not work at all.

Rating of CH Tung by key demographic groups