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Sponsored by Civic Exchange, Commissioned by the Concern Group on Article 23 of the Basic Law, Conducted by Public Opinion Programme

July 7, 2003

Note: Everything carried herewith does not represent the stand of the University of Hong Kong. Dr Robert Ting-Yiu Chung is responsible for the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong.

On July 1, 500,000 people demonstrated against legislation. On July 5, the government announced three amendments to the proposed legislation, including the removal of the proscription of groups affiliated with bodies banned on the mainland, the introduction of public interest as a defence in connection with the unlawful disclosure of certain official information, and the deletion of the provision which conferred on the police a power to conduct home searches without court warrant during emergency investigations. However, the schedule for passing the bill remained to be July 9. Until the early hours of today, after anticipating the amended bill would not be passed in the Legislative Council, the government finally announced the deferral of the legislation. Has the government satisfied the public's demand?

Civic Exchange again sponsored the Concern Group on Article 23 of the Basic Law to commission the POP Team to conduct a follow-up survey, in order to gauge people's latest opinion towards the legislation. The main areas of investigation were:

• The changes in people's support towards CE and the SAR Government after the "July 1 Demonstration" and the government's three amendments;
• Whether people accepted the government's concessions;
• People's latest demands.

The questionnaire was designed by the POP Team independently, without informing any organization, POP Team was fully responsible for the operation and data analysis of this study. The study was a random telephone survey conducted in two stages. Stage one of the survey was conducted between July 2 and 4, 2003, which successfully interviewed 1,046 Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong citizens aged 18 or above, with a response rate of 66.3%, while Stage two was conducted between July 4 and 5, 2003, with a sample size of 1,160 respondents and a response rate of 71.0%.

Results showed that, people's rating of CE Tung Chee-hwa after the "July 1 Demonstration" has dramatically dropped by 8.7 marks, from 43.7 marks in mid-June to 35.0 marks, setting a record low. After the announcement of the three amendments, Tung's rating was 35.4 marks, meaning that the three amendments did not pull him out of his credibility crisis. Moreover, if a general election of the Chief Executive were to be held the following day, and the people had the right to vote, 71% of the respondents would not vote for Tung, only 13% would. Over a month, an increase of 9 percentage points was recorded for those who did not trust Tung.

With respect to people's satisfaction with the SAR Government, after the "July 1 Demonstration", 65% were dissatisfied, 22% said "half-half", while only 9% were satisfied. The dissatisfaction figure has surged for 12 percentage points from that of mid-June to set another record high.

As for the Article 23 Legislation, results revealed that, after the government's three concessions, 54% still opposed passing the bill on July 9 as scheduled, only 23% supported such a move. If the legislation for Article 23 was passed, 40% of the respondents said they would continue their struggle in compliance with the law, 16% said they would defy the law.

Finally, as people began to watch for a change in SARG's leadership after the "July 1 Demonstration", this study has included one question which asked the respondents whether they considered a change in SARG's leadership to be a demand of people who took to the streets. Results indicated that 67% believed that the demand was there, which proved that the issue was on people's agenda.

There were other questions in the survey, like respondent's perception of the protestors' demands, and actual participation in the demonstration. Because these questions are not relevant to the main theme of this study, they would not be discussed here. Please refer to the "HKU POP SITE" (http://hkupop.pori.hk) for details.