HKU POP SITE releases the latest figures on CE's rating, people's confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future and "one country, two systems"Back

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 CE's rating, people's confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future and "One Country, Two Systems". 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 30, 2002, at 2 pm, the latest results on people's satisfaction with the HKSAR government, opinions on the independence of Taiwan and cross-strait reunification will be released. Then, on May 7, at 2 pm, we will release the latest popularity ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa, CS Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and FS Antony Leung Kam-chung. Four subjective social indicators on Hong Kong's degree of "democracy", "freedom", "prosperity", and "stability" will also be released.

According to the latest figures released today, CE Tung Chee-hwa's rating registered in early April (April 2-8) was 53.8, a drop of 1.1 marks when compared with that registered in March 18-20. This drop is not statistically significant, but compared to the figure registered in March 12-13, the drop of 2.3 marks is very significant.

Results also reveal that, compared to the figures captured in mid-February, people's confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future and "one country, two systems" have all dropped. For the confidence in the future of Hong Kong, the figure dropped for the first time since an upward trend which started last August. The latest figure captured in mid-April (April 15-17) was 51% confident, a drop of five percentage points when compared to that of mid-February. At the same time, people's confidence in the future of China has dropped slightly by one percentage point to 84%. The drop is not statistically significant. Our tracking survey results show that people's confidence in the future of China has remained higher than that of Hong Kong since January 1998. Finally, 56% of the respondents expressed confidence in the "one country, two systems", a decrease of seven percentage points when compared to the 63% registered in mid-February.

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 the rating of CE is less than plus/minus 1.3 marks, and that of all percentages is less than plus/minus 3 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 comment on the findings at this stage. 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.