POP Express Vol. 6 From the Editor - Death of Deng XiaopingBack

With the conclusion of memorial services for the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, people in Hong Kong and China are carefully watching for signs of political change.

Since the beginning of 1995, we have been mapping people's perception of Deng Xiaoping and other national figures. We believe it important for Hong Kong people to widen their horizon, especially after 1997, when Hong Kong would no longer be an isolated city on the South China coast.

In the last issue of POP Express, we summarized our two years' findings over people's perception of Deng Xiaoping, as well as their concern over post-Deng development. We now release the latest update of our opinion data, some of which were collected on the night when Deng died, some on the night after his death, and some collected five days later.

We believe it important, at this point in time, to release our data so that people can appraise Deng rationally and objectively. If our survey data only reflects some very superficial reaction of the Hong Kong people, which only forms one tiny speck of evidence pertinent to the appraisal of the great Chinese leader, it would nevertheless be an important piece of information which historians would find useful, at some point in time.

Chung Ting-yiu Robert