HKU POP SITE releases the latest findings on people's trust in the HKSAR and Beijing Central Governments, and their confidence in "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 findings on people's trust in the HKSAR and Beijing Central Governments, and their confidence in "one country, two systems". Our normal 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 forthcoming week. We will review and adjust this operation regularly.

According to our schedule, the date and time of our next release will be July 4, 2002, Thursday, at 2 pm, the ratings of Principal Officials under the accountability system and that of CE Tung Chee-hwa will be released. Then, on July 9, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, we will release the latest figures on people's opinions of the independence of Taiwan and cross-strait reunification, as well as people's confidence in Hong Kong's and China's future.

According to the survey findings released today, people's trust in the HKSAR Government has dropped for two consecutive times, and the latest figures captured in mid-June (June 17-19) revealed that 44% of the respondents trusted the HKSAR Government, a drop of four percentage points from that of mid-April. Meanwhile, the distrust level has increased by five percentage points, accounting for 26% of the overall sample.

As regards people's trust in the Beijing Central Government, the latest figures registered in mid-June showed that 45% of the respondents expressed trust, 25% did not, and 21% said "half-half". When compared with the result of mid-April, the distrust figure has increased by eight percentage points, and yet, people's trust in the central government was still slightly higher than that of the local government, though the difference was no longer significant. Finally, 56% of the respondents expressed confidence in "one country, two systems", 33% did not. The negative figure has increased for five percentage points when compared to the 28% registered in mid-April.

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 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.