[an error occurred while processing the directive] 香港大學民意研究計劃 Public Opinion Programme, The University of Hong Kong

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Press Release on February 25, 2003
 

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 rating of CE Tung Chee-hwa, people's satisfaction with CE's policy direction and the HKSAR Government, people's trust in the HKSAR and Beijing Central Governments, as well as their confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future and "one country, two systems". 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 March 4, 2003, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest results of people's satisfaction with the freedom of the press in Hong Kong, their appraisal of the credibility of the local news media in general, as well as the latest ratings of the most well-known political groups will be released.

 

Between February 14 and 18, 2003, POP conducted a random telephone survey which successfully interviewed 1,045 Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above. Results showed that the latest rating of CE Tung Chee-hwa registered was 45.4 marks, a slight drop of 0.2 mark from that of early February, which means basically unchanged. Regarding people's satisfaction with CE's policy direction, the latest figures indicated that 12% of the respondents were satisfied, 47% were dissatisfied, 26% said "half-half", while 16% did not give a definite answer. When compared to the results of late January (January 23-28), the satisfaction figure has dropped by 3 percentage points to hit its record low.

 

With respect to people's appraisal of the performance of the HKSAR Government, 15% of the respondents were satisfied with its performance, 56% were dissatisfied, 26% said "half-half", while 4% did not give a definite answer. The satisfaction figure has dropped by 5 percentage points from that of late January to its record low. On the other hand, the dissatisfaction figure has increased by 6 percentage points to reach its record high.

 

Regarding people's trust in the HKSAR Government, the latest figures registered in mid-February revealed that 31% of the respondents trusted the government, 42% did not, 22% said "half-half", while 6% did not give a definite answer. When compared to the findings registered in mid-December last year, the positive figure has decreased by 5 percentage points to set its record low, whereas a significant increase of 7 percentage points was observed for the negative figure, which has climbed to its record high.

 

On the other hand, our latest results indicated that 41% of the respondents trusted the Beijing Central Government, 26% did not, while 21% said "half-half". The trust level has dropped by 4 percentage points when compared to that of mid-December last year, yet continued to be higher than the corresponding figure for the local government.

 

Meanwhile, the latest findings revealed that 42% of the respondents were confident in Hong Kong's future, whereas 46% were not. The proportion of respondents who were not confident has increased by 4 percentage points from that of mid-December last year. As for people's confidence in the future of China, 83% expressed confidence, which was much higher than the corresponding figure for Hong Kong's future. On the other hand, 49% of the respondents were confident in "one country, two systems", whilst 39% were not, representing an increase of 4 percentage points from that of mid-December last year.

 

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, made the following observations on the latest findings: "Practically all indicators have dropped in this round of survey. People's dissatisfaction with the government has continued to grow, and the popularity rating of CE Tung is again near its record low registered in late January. According to conventional standards used in other countries, Tung's current approval rate is only around 20% to 25%, which could be a dangerous level. At the moment, both the people's dissatisfaction and distrust with the government are at record highs, and the latter has also broken the 40% level. This has compressed people's confidence in the future of Hong Kong. Since August 2002, this is the second time when the level of distrust is higher than that of trust, and significantly more people are not confident in the future of Hong Kong than those being confident. There is one more important point to note: people's confidence in "one country, two systems" has continued to drop since February last year. At present, "confidence" is only ahead of "non-confidence" for less than 10 percentage points, which is unprecedented. Both the central and local governments should pay attention to this."

 

The new poll released 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 1,045 respondents. At 95% confidence level, the sampling error of the rating of CE Tung Chee-hwa is plus/minus 1.4 marks, while that of all percentages is less than plus/minus 3 percentage points. The meaning of "95% confidence level" is that 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 further comment on the findings. Shall any person or journalist have any other questions, please email them to us at <pop.network@hkupop.pori.hk>. The Director of Public Opinion Programme would answer them as soon as possible. We will keep such an arrangement under constant review, suggestions most welcome. Please note that everything carried in the POP Site does not represent the stand of the University of Hong Kong. Dr Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, is responsible for everything posted herewith, except for column articles which represent the stand of their authors.