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 figures on people's trust in the HKSAR and Beijing Central Governments. Our current 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 May 21, 2002, at 2 pm; the latest results on the popularity rating of CE Tung Chee-hwa, people's satisfaction with the HKSAR Government, its Secretaries, and members of the Legislative and Executive Councils in general, as well as the results of the four subjective indicators on Hong Kong's freedom of "speech", "press", "publication", and "procession and demonstration" will be released. Then, on May 28, 2002, at 2 pm, we will release the latest figures on the popularity ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa, CS Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, FS Antony Leung Kam-chung and the top ten Legislative Councilors.

According to the latest figures released today, people's trust in the HKSAR Government dropped for the first time after three consecutive increases recorded since last August. The latest figures captured in mid-April (April 15-17) revealed that 48% of the people of Hong Kong trusted the HKSAR Government, a drop of two percentage points when compared with that of mid-February. Meanwhile, the distrust level has slightly increased by one percentage point, accounting for 21% of the overall sample. Both changes, however, are statistically not significant.

As regards people's trust in the Beijing Central Government, the latest figures registered in mid-April (April 15-17) showed that 49% of the Hong Kong people expressed trust, 18% not, 23% remained "half-half". The trust figure dropped by three percentage points when compared with that of mid-February, and yet, people's trust in the central government was still higher than that of the local government, though the difference was no longer significant.

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. 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.