HKU POP SITE releases the latest ratings of the top ten political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan, as well as people's 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 ratings of the top ten political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan, as well as people's opinions towards the independence of Taiwan and cross-strait reunification. 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 October 15, 2002, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa and Principal Officials under the accountability system will be released.

According to the latest figures released today, among the best known political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan, Zhu Rongji obtained the highest support rating in mid-September (September 12-17) with 75.3 marks, followed by Jiang Zemin with 65.7 marks. Qian Qichen, Hu Jintao and Ma Ying-Jeou ranked third, fourth and fifth, with 64.7, 63.1 and 62.4 marks respectively. The sixth to the tenth ranks fell to Li Peng, Lien Chan, Chen Shui-bian, Lee Teng-hui and Lu Hsiu-lien correspondingly, all with less than 50 marks. The mean score obtained by the top five political figures was 66.2 marks, while that for the top ten was 53.7 marks. Compared to the results registered in a similar survey conducted in mid-March this year, mean scores for the top five and top ten political figures have dropped by 1.6 and 2.9 marks respectively.

As regards people's opinion towards the independence of Taiwan, the latest results obtained in mid-September showed that 70% of the respondents opposed, 13% agreed, while 17% did not give a definite answer. When compared with the results of mid-June, the proportion of respondents who opposed has increased by 4 percentage points, whereas a drop of 3 percentage points was registered for those who agreed. Results also revealed that 48% of the respondents were confident in the ultimate reunification across the strait, 36% were not, and the remaining 17% did not give a definite answer. These figures were more or less the same as those registered in mid-June.

The research design of our "Top 10 political figures of Mainland China and Taiwan" has been explained in detail under "Survey Method" in our corresponding web site. The top political figures listed in our latest survey were all those who obtained highest unprompted mentions in our first stage naming survey conducted in early September. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 political figures whom they knew best. Jiang Zemin, Chen Shui-bian, Zhu Rongji, Ma Ying-jeou and Lu Hsiu-lien were the top five figures most frequently mentioned. Please refer to the relevant table for the rest of the list. The twelve most frequently mentioned political figures were then entered into the second stage of the survey conducted in mid-September, during which respondents were asked to rate each political figure in turn using a 0-100 scale. 0 indicates absolutely no support, 100 indicates absolute support, and 50 means half-half. After calculation, the bottom two political figures in terms of recognition rate were dropped; the remaining ten were then ranked according to their support ratings attained to become the top ten political figures. For easy reference, the POP Site has already displayed the results of all naming surveys conducted since June 1997.

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 support ratings for the top 10 political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan is less than plus/minus 1.8 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.