HKU POP SITE releases the latest figures on the popularity of SAR and Central Governments, and people's confidence in the future surveyBack

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 findings on people's trust in the HKSAR and Beijing Central Governments, their confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future and "one country, two systems". The released result of this series is the last round in 2004 and half-yearly average figures of these surveys are available in our website. Recent figures are summarized below:

* "95% confidence level" means 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.
** Collapsed from a 5-point scale.

The survey conducted in late December last year revealed that 39% of the respondents trusted the HKSAR Government, and 51% trusted the Beijing Central Government. On the other hand, 64% of the respondents had confidence in Hong Kong's future and 84% had confidence in China's future, while 64% of the respondents were confident in "one country, two systems".

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "Our latest survey shows that people's distrust in the SAR Government has increased sharply by 15 percentage points, back to that half a year ago. On the contrary, people's trust in the Central Government has significantly increased, to almost the record high registered in February 2002, giving a stark contrast. Because people's trust in the Central Government has increased, their confidence in 'one country, two systems' has also rebounded to the level registered in February 2002. There was not much change in people's confidence in the future of Hong Kong and China. However, if we look at the half-yearly figures on a macro level, people's trust in the local government, their confidence in the future of Hong Kong and 'one country, two systems', have all recovered to that before the July 1 Rally of 2003. People's trust in the Central Government has also recovered to that before the dispute over universal suffrage broke out. Whether the trends would continue or not depends very much on how the local and central governments would react to people's new wave of demands."

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. The date and time of our next release of regular survey findings will be January 11, 2004, Tuesday, at 2 pm, the latest popularity figures of CE Tung Chee-hwa, Principal Officials under the accountability system and members of the Executive Council will be released.

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.