HKU POP SITE releases the latest results on people's rating of CE Tung Chee-hwa, their satisfaction with <br>the HKSAR Government, and their 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 the rating of CE Tung Chee-hwa, people's satisfaction with the HKSAR Government as well as their trust in the HKSAR and Beijing Central Governments. POP's 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 this schedule, the date and time of our next release will be September 3, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest figures on the ratings of the most well-known political groups, people's confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future, and "one country, two systems" will be released.

According to the survey findings released today, CE Tung Chee-hwa's rating registered in mid-August (August 14-19) has dropped for two consecutive months to a record low of 47.0 marks. Regarding people's appraisal of the HKSAR Government's performance, 16% of the respondents were satisfied, 52% were dissatisfied, 26% said "half-half", while 6% did not give a definite answer. Compared to the result registered in July, the dissatisfaction figure has increased significantly by nine percentage points to reach a record high.

Meanwhile, people's trust in the HKSAR Government has continued to drop since the beginning of this year. The latest figure registered in mid-August was 31%, while a record high of 37% distrusted the government. It was also the first time that distrust has overtaken trust.

As regards people's trust in the Beijing Central Government, the latest results showed that 37% of the respondents trusted the Beijing Central Government, 28% not, and 24% said "half-half". Compared with the results registered in mid-June, the trust level has dropped by eight percentage points, but has remained higher than that of the local government.

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 the CE rating is plus/minus 1.2 marks, while 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.