HKU POP SITE releases the latest findings on people's ethnic identityBack

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 ethnic identity. Although this topic had been carried in our previous monthly newsletter "POP Express", it is released on-line for the first time. 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 24, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest rating of CE Tung Chee-hwa, people's appraisal of the HKSAR Government and members of the Legislative Council in general will be released. We will also release the latest results on people's most concerned problems and their satisfaction with the current political, economic and social conditions.

As regards the latest figures (September 2-5) released today, when asked to make a choice among four given identities, namely, "Hong Kong Citizen", "Chinese Hong Kong Citizen", "Hong Kong Chinese Citizen" and "Chinese Citizen", 33% of the respondents interviewed identified themselves as "Chinese Citizens", 29% as "Hong Kong Citizens", 22% as "Chinese Hong Kong Citizens", while 15% identified themselves as "Hong Kong Chinese Citizens". In other words, 51% of the respondents identified themselves as "Hong Kong People" in the broader sense (i.e. either as "Hong Kong Citizens" or "Chinese Hong Kong Citizens"), whereas 48% identified themselves as "Chinese People" in the broader sense (i.e. either as "Chinese Citizens" or "Hong Kong Chinese Citizens"). On a macro level, the proportion of respondents who identified themselves as "Hong Kong People" in the broader sense has dropped about 10 percentage points in five years (please see the chart with per-poll figures), while the corresponding figure of "Chinese People" in the broader sense has increased by the same amount. As for those who identified themselves specifically as "Chinese Citizens", there was a significant increase of 14 percentage points.

Because concepts of "Hong Kong Citizen", "Chinese Hong Kong Citizen", "Chinese Citizen" and "Hong Kong Chinese Citizen" may overlap with each other, making the one-in-four choice not reflective of the actual strengths of one's ethnic identities, POP has therefore conducted parallel tests on the strengths of people's separate identities as "Hong Kong Citizens" and "Chinese Citizens", for quite a long time, using a scale of 0-10. The latest figure registered in early June this year was 7.97 marks for "Hong Kong Citizens", and 7.82 marks for "Chinese Citizens". On a macro level (please see the chart with per-poll figures), although people's strengths of identities as "Hong Kong Citizens" and "Chinese Citizens" have been fluctuating since the handover, the difference between the two has significantly narrowed. An upward trend is observed for the Chinese identity.

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 people's ratings towards their strengths of identities as "Hong Kong citizens" and "Chinese citizens" is plus/minus 0.14 mark, 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.