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 10 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 April 15, 2003, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest ratings of CE Tung Chee-hwa and Principal Officials under the accountability system will be released.

During March 17 and 19, 2003, POP conducted a random telephone survey which successfully interviewed 1,068 Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong of age 18 or above. Results showed that, among the best known political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan, Zhu Rongji has remained to be the most popular figure, attaining 79.2 marks, leading with quite a wide margin from the rest. Jiang Zemin ranked 2nd with 66.4 marks. Ma Ying-jeou, Qian Qichen and James Soong ranked from 3rd to 5th, with 65.8, 63.1 and 53.8 marks correspondingly. The 6th to10th ranks fell to Lien Chan, Li Peng, Chen Shui-bian, Lu Hsiu-lien and Lee Teng-hui correspondingly, all attaining a score below 50 marks. The mean score obtained by the top 5 political figures was 65.7 marks, while that for the top 10 was 53.6 marks.

As regards people's opinion towards the independence of Taiwan, the latest results obtained in mid-March indicated that 72% of the respondents opposed, 13% agreed, while 15% did not give a definite answer. When compared with the results of mid-December last year, the proportion of respondents who opposed has increased significantly by 5 percentage points. Results also revealed that 50% of the respondents were confident in the ultimate reunification across the strait, 34% were not, and the remaining 16% did not give a definite answer. No significant changes were observed when compared with the corresponding figures registered in mid-December last year.

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 March. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 political figures whom they knew best. Chen Shui-bian, Jiang Zemin, Ma Ying-jeou, Zhu Rongji and so on were mentioned most frequently. Please refer to the relevant table for the rest of the list. The 12 most frequently mentioned political figures were then entered into the second stage of the survey conducted in mid-March, 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 2 political figures in terms of recognition rate were dropped; the remaining 10 were then ranked according to their support ratings attained to become the top 10 political figures. For easy reference, the POP Site has already displayed the results of all naming surveys conducted since June 1997.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, made the following observations on the latest findings: "This survey was conducted around the conclusion of the 10^th National People's Congress (NPC) and 10^th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Meetings. Theoretically, Hong Kong people should have become more familiar with China's new leadership. However, both the new Chinese President Hu Jintao and the new Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao failed to find their way into the list of top 10 most well known leaders. On the contrary, both Lien Chan and James Soong were on the list, probably due to their recent high-profile announcement of their prospective bidding for the Taiwan presidency as "Lien-Soong Pairing". Hong Kong people are apparently quite interested in the Taiwan presidential election, and the ratio of Mainland China versus Taiwan leaders in the top 10 list was 4:6. In terms of support rating, however, the ex-Premier Zhu Rongji was way on the top, much much higher than HKSAR's Chief Executive and senior officers. Zhu has won the heart of many Hong Kong people, and has significantly pulled people closer to the Central Government. Whereas for the 6 Taiwan leaders on the list, only Ma Ying-jeou and James Soong managed to secure over-50 support ratings. Those with low scores probably reflected Hong Kong people's disapproval of the independence movement in Taiwan".

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 1,068 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. 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 <[email protected]>. 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.