HKU POP SITE releases latest trust and confidence indicatorsBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong interviewed 1,005 Hong Kong people between 20 and 30 October by means of a random telephone survey conducted by real interviewers. Our survey finds that compared to two months ago, people's trust in the HKSAR government has remained stable, but their distrust has surged by 14 percentage points. Its net trust has significantly narrowed from positive 32 percentage points two months ago to positive 17 percentage points now. People's trust in the central and Taiwan governments have gone up by 4 and 5 percentage points respectively. Their net trust now stands at positive 33 and negative 16 percentage points, and people continue to trust the central government more than the local government. As for the confidence indicators, people's confidence in the future of Hong Kong and "one country, two systems" have gone down by 4 percentage points, while their confidence in China's future has not changed much. All positive figures have remained high, and people's net confidence in the future of Hong Kong, China and "one country, two systems" now stand at positive 41, 79 and 41 percentage points respectively. Director of POP Robert Chung pointed out that it was in October 2001 that Hong Kong people began to trust Beijing more than the local government. The situation continued for three and a half years until it was reversed in April 2005. Chung said the underlying meaning of this phenomenon deserves some contemplation. The maximum sampling error of all percentages is between +/-2 and +/-3 percentage points at 95% confidence level, while the response rate of the survey is 73%.

POP today releases on schedule via the POP Site the latest findings on people's trust in the HKSAR, Beijing Central and Taiwan Governments, their confidence in Hong Kong's future, China's future and "one country, two systems". As a general practice, all 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 mid-2009. Herewith the contact information for the latest survey:

Recent popularity figures of SAR, Beijing Central and Taiwan Governments, and people's confidence in the future are summarized below:

Survey conducted in second half of October revealed that 45% of the respondents trusted the HKSAR Government, 52% trusted the Beijing Central Government, and 22% trusted the Taiwan Government. On the other hand, 67% of the respondents had confidence in Hong Kong's future and 87% had confidence in China's future, while 67% of the respondents were confident in 「one country, two systems」.

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 August 25 to 30, 2009 while this survey was conducted from October 20 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.