HKU POP SITE releases the latest figures on people's trust in the HKSAR and Beijing Central GovernmentsBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong today releases on schedule via the "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) the latest survey figures on people's trust in the HKSAR and Beijing Central Governments. Our practice is to release the results of our regular surveys every Tuesday at 2 pm via our POP Site, except during public holidays, each time with a forecast of the items to be released in the next two weeks. The POP Site will review and adjust this operation regularly; readers are welcome to leave their comments at our website.

According to this schedule, the date and time of our next release will be April 9, 2002, at 2 pm, the latest popularity ratings of CE, the Chief Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and the Financial Secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung, and the findings of the Budget follow-up survey will be released. Then, on April 16, 2002, at 2 pm, we will release the ratings of the top ten political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan.

According to the latest (February) figures released today, people's trust in the HKSAR Government climbed six more percentage points since last December, back to the level registered in February 2000, while the distrust level has dropped three consecutive times since last August's 30%. The latest results show that 50% of the Hong Kong people trusted the HKSAR Government, 20% not, 24% remained "half-half".

As regards people's trust in the Beijing Central Government, the level of trust has been increasing since last August and overtook that of the local government last October. The latest (February) results show that 52% of the Hong Kong people trusted the Beijing Central Government, 19% not, 20% remained "half-half". Although the figures are not significantly different from those registered last time, people's trust in the central government has again reached historic high. The upward trend has dampened, but people's trust in the central government is still higher than that of the local government.

The new survey reported in the POP Site today is a random telephone survey conducted by interviewers, targeting at Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above. The sample size of the survey is over 1,000 respondents. At 95% confidence level, the sampling error of all percentages is less than plus/minus three percentage points. The meaning of "95% confidence level" is that if we were to repeat a certain survey 100 times, using the same questions each time but with different random samples, we would expect 95 times getting a figure within the error margins specified.　Shall anyone have any question regarding the research design of the surveys published in the POP Site, members of the POP Team will be happy to answer them, but we will not be able to provide additional comments. Such an arrangement would be reviewed when more resources are available. Please note that Dr CHUNG Ting-yiu Robert, Director of Public Opinion Programme, is solely responsible for the work published in the POP Site, which does not represent the stand of the University of Hong Kong.