HKU POP SITE releases the latest ratings of top 10 political figures in Mainland China and TaiwanBack

Last week, the "POP Site" at http://hkupop.pori.hk hosted by the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong set up new links and functions like Facebook, Twitter, and RSS. The number of such links and functions has now increased to over 40, in order to help readers follow its content update and share its latest information with others. POP has also established a Facebook website at http://www.facebook.com/hkupop/ in early August, which has been running smoothly since then.

POP conducted a double stage survey on the ranking of the top 10 political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan in September, by means of random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers. The surveys find that compared to 6 months ago, no change has occurred in the relative ranking of the top 10 cross-strait political figures. Wen Jiabao continues to top the list, while the split across the strait remains 50:50, meaning that the ranking structure has remained very stable. In terms of support rating, the popularity ratings of most figures have dropped, that of Ma Ying-jeou, Wen Jiabao, Lien Chan and Hu Jintao have dropped beyong sampling errors, while the ratings of Lee Teng-hui and Lu Hsiu-lien at the lower end registered significant increases. Meanwhile, Chen Shui-bian continues to be affected by his family corruption case and obtains an extremely low score of 13.8 marks, which is also an all-time record low figure of this survey series. The sampling errors of the rating survey registered fall between +/-1.0 and 1.6 while the response rate of the rating survey is 66%.

POP SITE today releases on schedule the latest ratings of the top 10 political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan. All the figures have been weighted according to provisional figures obtained from the Census and Statistics Department regarding the gender-age distribution of the Hong Kong population in 2008 year-end. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:

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 mid-September. In that survey, respondents could name, unaided, up to 10 political figures whom they knew best. Ma Ying-jeou, Wen Jiabao, Hu Jintao, Chen Shui-bian and Jiang Zemin 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 late-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 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. Recent ratings of the top political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan are summarized as follows:

Survey conducted in late-September revealed that, among the ten most well-known political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan, in terms of popularity rating, Wen Jiabao topped the list, attaining 77.5 marks. The 2nd and 3rd ranks went to Hu Jintao and Zhu Rongji with respective scores of 75.7 and 75.4 marks. Ma Ying-jeou, Jiang Zemin and Lien Chan occupied the 4th to 6th ranks with 62.3, 61.0 and 52.9 marks correspondingly. The 7th to 10th ranks fell to Li Peng, Lee Teng-hui, Lu Hsiu-lien and Chen Shui-bian with respective scores of 44.1, 43.4, 35.4 and 13.8 marks. For this latest survey, Xi Jinping and Wu Bangguo obtained support ratings of 62.7 and 55.3 marks respectively, but they were dropped due to their relatively low recognition rates. The mean score obtained by the top 5 political figures was 70.4 marks, while that for the top 10 was 54.2 marks. As for the overall ratings ranked according to results obtained over the past 18 calendar months are tabulated as follows:

The overall rankings in the past 18 months showed that seven political figures have been on the list for four times. They are Wen Jiabao in the top rank achieving an average rating of 78.8 marks, Hu Jintao and Zhu Rongji who ranked 2nd and 3rd, attaining 76.1 and 75.5 marks correspondingly, Ma Ying-jeou, Jiang Zemin, Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian who ranked 4th to 7th with respective scores of 66.6, 61.4, 40.5 and 17.6 marks. Lien Chan, Li Peng and Lu Hsiu-lien have been on the list for three times with 53.0, 45.0 and 34.3 marks and ranked the 8th to 10th correspondingly. Wu Yi has been on the list for two times, attaining 71.8 marks at the 11th rank. Hsieh Chang-ting was listed once, and occupied the 12th rank.

In January 2007, POP opened a feature page called "Opinion Daily" at the "POP Site", to record significant events and selected polling figures on a day-to-day basis, in order to let readers judge by themselves the reasons for the ups and downs of different opinion figures. In July 2007, POP collaborated with Wisers Information Limited whereby Wisers supplies to POP each day starting from July 24, a record of significant events of that day, according to the research method designed by POP. These daily entries would be uploaded to "Opinion Daily" as soon as they are verified by POP.

For the polling items covered in this press release, the previous survey was conducted from March 17 to 18, 2009 while this survey was conducted from September 24 to 30, 2009. In between these two surveys, herewith the significant events selected from counting newspaper headlines and commentaries on a daily basis and covered by at least 25% of the local newspaper articles. Readers can make their own judgment if these significant events have any impacts to different polling figures.

Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, Director of Public Opinion Programme, observed, "Compared to 6 months ago, no change has occurred in the relative ranking of the top 10 cross-strait political figures. Wen Jiabao continues to top the list, while the split across the strait remains 50:50, meaning that the ranking structure has remained very stable. In terms of support rating, the popularity ratings of most figures have dropped, that of Ma Ying-jeou, Wen Jiabao, Lien Chan and Hu Jintao have dropped beyong sampling errors, while the ratings of Lee Teng-hui and Lu Hsiu-lien at the lower end registered significant increases. Meanwhile, Chen Shui-bian continues to be affected by his family corruption case and obtains an extremely low score of 13.8 marks, which is also an all-time record low figure of this survey series. It should be noted, however, that our 'Top 10 Cross-Strait Political Figures' only include those best known to the Hong Kong public, ranked according to their support ratings. Other political figures may have very high or low support ratings, but they are excluded from the list because they are relatively less well-known. As for the reasons affecting the ups and downs of those figures on the list, we leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using the detailed records displayed in our 'Opinion Daily'. With the defrost of cross-strait relations, and increasing exchanges between Hong Kong and Taiwan, one can expect Hong Kong people's knowledge of Taiwan politicians to increase, both in terms of breadth and depth."

• October 12, 2009 (Monday) 1pm to 2pm: People's Expectation of Policy Address
• October 13, 2009 (Tuesday) 1pm to 2pm: Popularity of CE Donald Tsang and Principal Officials