Hong Kong By The Numbers

On April 19-20, Ming Pao used its automated telephone polling systems to poll 527 random persons in Hong Kong.  Here are the two survey questions and the results:

Q1.  On Sunday (April 27), the National People's Congress Standing Committee will convene to issue an interpretation that the new Chief Executive to be elected on July 10 will serve out the "remaining term" of the former Chief Executive as opposed to a new 5 year term.  Do you support the National People's Congress interpreting the Basic Law once again?

• 42.7% support
• 38.1% oppose
• 15.4% no opinion
•   3.8% don't know

Q2.  Some citizens had already petitioned for judicial reviews over the length of tenure of the Chief Executive.  What do you think is the impact of the "interpretation of the law" on the rule of law?

• 42.4% will damage the rule of law
• 32.6% will help the rule of law
• 18.0% has no impact on the rule of law
•   7.0% don't know/no opinion

If 42.4% believe that this will damage the rule of law and 38.1% oppose it, that leaves at least 4.1% who do not oppose something that is damaging.  What gives?

On a technical note, I don't think that the automated telephone polling system is a good technique.  When the phone rings and there is a real person on the other end begging to ask two questions, you may oblige out of sheer politeness.  But if it a mechanical voice system, it is a lot easier to just hang up immediately.  The automated telephone polling system is preferred only because there are no human labor costs.

From the Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong comes the latest popularity polls for the Chief Executive for the period April 11-14.  The rating of Donald Tsang is current at 71.8%.  He also has a vote of confidence of 73% compared to a vote of no confidence of 9%.  For the final poll of the previous Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, the rating was 47.9%, with 18% vote of confidence and 69% vote of no confidence.

There are more survey results at the HKU POP site, but here is the one that is striking:

• 29% perceived the distribution of wealth in Hong Kong to be reasonable
• 51% perceived the distribution of wealth in Hong Kong to be unreasonable

What can be done?  Nobody has the bulletproof answer.

According to Ming Pao, the website Baby-Kingdom.com surveyed 964 of its members between April 14-21 about parents' opinions with respect to Hong Kong Disneyland.

• 11% have already booked hotels and tickets as soon as they became available
• 27% say that they will save enough money for the entire family to visit
•   4% say that they will shelf plants to visit Disney theme parks in other countries
• 36% say that they will wait for word-of-mouth reviews before deciding
•   9% say that it depends on the ticket prices
•   4% say that they don't care because they don't intend to go

Open-ended comments include: "The children may want to go, but we might do that later.  If too many people go there, we will only be spending our time in queues" and "I hate crowded places, and that place will be filled with mainland Chinese visitors."

On a technical note, this is a survey of website members and therefore may not be representative of the general population.  In fact, it probably not.