HKU POP SITE releases the latest results on people's confidence in Hong Kong's and China's future, their opinions towards the independence of Taiwan and cross-strait reunificationBack

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 results on people's confidence in Hong Kong's and China's future, their opinions towards the independence of Taiwan and cross-strait reunification. 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 16, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest rating of CE Tung Chee-hwa, people's satisfaction with the HKSAR Government and members of the Legislative Council in general will be released.

According to the survey findings released today, in mid-June (June 17-19), 47% of the respondents expressed confidence in Hong Kong's future, a drop of five percentage points from that of mid-April. Regarding people's confidence in the future of China, the figures registered in late June (June 26-28) showed that 74% were confident, which was a significant drop of ten percentage points from that of mid-April, but still much higher than that for Hong Kong's future.

As regards the independence of Taiwan, the latest results of mid-June (June 17-19) revealed that 66% of the respondents opposed, 16% agreed, while 19% did not give an answer. When compared with the results of mid-March, the proportion of respondents who opposed has decreased by five percentage points. Results also revealed that 45% of the respondents were confident in the ultimate reunification across the strait, 37% were not, and the remaining 18% did not give an answer. When compared with the results of mid-March, those who were optimistic on this issue have dropped by nine percentage points.

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 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.