HKU POP SITE releases the findings of the Budget follow-up survey and the latest figures on people's ratings of the CE Tung Chee-hwa, the CS Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and the FS Antony Leung Kam-chungBack

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 findings of the Budget follow-up survey and the latest survey figures on the latest popularity ratings of the CE Tung Chee-hwa, the CS Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and the FS Antony Leung Kam-chung. 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.

According to this schedule, the date and time of our next release will be April 16, 2002, at 2 pm, the ratings of the top ten political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan will be released. Then, on April 23, 2002, at 2 pm, we will release CE's latest rating, people's confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future and "One Country, Two Systems".

According to the figures released today, CE's three separate ratings registered in March were 54.7 marks for March 6, 56.1 marks for March 12 to 13, and 54.9 marks for March 18 to 20. The three corresponding ratings for CS Donald Tsang Yam-kuen were 65.1, 66.2, and 64.5 respectively, whereas those for FS Antony Leung Kam-chung were 63.4, 65.4, and 63.3 respectively.

In the past many years, POP has conducted instant polls immediately after the head of the government delivered his policy address, and the Financial Secretary delivered his budget speech. Such instant polls, which measure people's instant reaction to the policies, would be followed weeks later by our follow-up surveys, which measure people's more matured reaction. We believe this is the better way to study changing public opinion on these issues.

As for the results of the Budget follow-up survey, our latest figures show that 44% were satisfied with the Budget, 19% dissatisfied and 31% said "half-half". The overall satisfaction figure dropped slightly by three percentage points when compared to that of our instant poll. Regarding the government's strategy in monetary arrangement, our latest findings show that there was a four-way split as 28% were satisfied, 23% not, 29% were neutral and 20% did not give a definite answer. When compared with the results of the instant poll conducted on March 6, the percentage of those satisfied and dissatisfied remained fairly stable. In other words, as regards people's satisfaction with the government's financial strategy and the Budget itself, figures obtained from this year's instant and follow-up polls differed only slightly, so public opinions are much more stable than those in the past two years.

Regarding the Budget's specific proposals, among the 1,216 respondents interviewed, 61% agreed to the introduction of a Boundary Facilities Improvement Tax to be imposed starting from the year of 2003/04, while 30% disagreed. Besides, follow-up poll shows that half of the respondents considered the increase in the duty rate on wine and cutting the quantities of duty-free tobacco and alcoholic beverages to be sufficient measures to raise government revenue, but 39% said it was not sufficient. For the six proposed measures to "help the community ride out of the storm", 65% considered the measures adequate, 29% said not adequate.

On the issue of salary cut mentioned by the FS, 49% considered a salary cut of 4.75% for civil servants and staff of all subvented organizations to be reasonable, 16% considered the cut not enough, 21% said the cut would be "too much". In order to have a more detailed analysis of the problem, we have added two more questions on this topic in our follow-up survey. Results show that, among the 1,216 respondents interviewed, 47% believed that a salary cut for civil servants and staff of all subvented organizations should be implemented, 31% suggested to freeze the salary, 21% did not give a definite answer, and practically nobody suggested a pay rise. As regards the magnitude of salary adjustment, the average salary cut proposed by all respondents was 3.69%, which is about one-quarter less than that mentioned by FS.

Because salary cut is now a focal problem on the Budget, and because it involves lots of interest at stake, POP therefore further analyzed the difference in opinion among different groups of affected people. For the 106 respondents who were civil servants or whose salaries were linked to the salary scales of civil servants, 36% believed that a salary cut should be implemented, 50% suggested to freeze the salary, only 1% suggested a salary rise. The average adjustment figure proposed by this directly affected group was a cut of 1.86%. As for another 153 respondents whose family members were civil servants or whose salaries were linked to the salary scales of civil servants, 39% believed that a salary cut should be implemented, 40% suggested a salary freeze, while 3% suggested a pay rise. The average adjustment figure proposed by this indirectly affected group was a cut of 3.39%. As for the remaining 922 unaffected respondents (neither the respondents themselves nor any of their family members is a civil servant or whose salaries is linked to the salary scale of civil servants), 50% believed that a salary cut should be implemented, 28% suggested a salary freeze, only 1% suggested a pay rise, and the average salary cut proposed by this unaffected group was 4.01%, the highest percentage recorded amongst the three sub-groups.

In addition, as regards Antony Leung's analysis of the economy of Hong Kong, 68% in our follow-up survey agreed with him that "while the medium- and long-term outlook of [Hong Kong's] economy is promising, it will take time for our economy to recover", 20% disagreed with such analysis. When asked if they thought the government could achieve consolidated and operating balances by 2006/07, only 25% believed that the government could do it, 51% held the opposite view. The latter figure dropped by thirteen percentage points when compared to that registered in the instant poll. Regarding Antony Leung's analysis that it is enough for the government to reserve 12 months' expenditure in future, 41% said the amount is "just right", 36% said it would be "too little", 4% said it would still be "too much.

Finally, 63% of the respondents considered Hong Kong's tax system to be fair in general, 25% considered it unfair. The former figure increased by eight percentage points when compared to that of the instant poll. As on the distribution of wealth in Hong Kong, 26% considered the distribution reasonable, 53% considered it unreasonable.

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 errors of the ratings of Tung, Tsang and Leung are less than plus/minus 1.4 marks, that of the overall figure on salary adjustment is plus/minus 0.4 percentage points, and that of all other percentages is less than plus/minus 2.8 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.