HKU POP SITE releases the latest figures on the top ten political figures in Mainland China and TaiwanBack

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 the top ten political figures of Mainland China and Taiwan. 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 23, 2002, at 2 pm, the latest results of CE's rating, people's confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future and "One Country, Two Systems" will be released. Then, on April 30, 2002, at 2 pm, we will release the latest results on people's satisfaction with the HKSAR government, opinions on the independence of Taiwan and cross-strait reunification.

According to the latest figures released today, the political figure who obtained the highest support ratings in early March were Zhu Rongji, with 77.7 marks, followed by Jiang Zemin, with 70.8 marks. Ma Ying-Jeou and Qian Qichen ranked third and fourth, with 67.7 and 66.7 marks respectively. James Soong and Lien Chan ranked fifth and sixth, with 56.0 and 50.3 marks respectively. The seventh to the tenth ranks fell to Li Peng, Chen Shui-bian, Lee Teng-hui and Lu Hsiu-lien correspondingly, all with less than 50 marks. The mean score obtained by the top five political figures was 67.8 marks, while that for the top ten was 56.6 marks. Compared to the results registered in a similar survey conducted last September, both averages have increased by about two percentage points. Besides, the order in the support ratings of individual political figures have remained almost the same.

The research design of our "Top 10 political figures of Mainland China and Taiwan" has been explained in detail under "Survey Method" in our corresponding web page. The top political figures listed in our latest survey were all those who obtained highest unprompted mentions in our first stage naming survey conducted in early March. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 political figures whom they knew best. Jiang Zemin, Chen Shui-bian, Zhu Rongji, Li Peng and Ma Ying-jeou were mentioned most frequently. Please refer to the relevant table for the rest of the list. The twelve most frequently mentioned political figures were then entered into the second stage of the survey and during the second stage of the survey conducted in mid-March, respondents were asked to rate each political figure in turn using a 0-100 scale. 0 indicates absolutely no support, 100 indicates absolute support, and 50 means half-half. After calculation, the bottom two political figures in terms of recognition rate were dropped; the remaining ten were then ranked according to their support ratings attained to become the top ten political figures. For easy reference, the POP Site has already displayed the result of all naming surveys conducted since year 2000.

All new surveys reported in the POP Site today are random telephone surveys conducted by interviewers, targeting at Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above. The sample size of all surveys is over 1,000 respondents. At 95% confidence level, the sampling error of all support ratings for the top 10 political figures is less than plus/minus 1.8 marks, while that for percentages in the naming survey is less than plus/minus 3.2 percentage points. That means 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.