The Hong Kong 7/1 March: Media Coverage

Here are the Hong Kong newspaper front pages:

Apple Daily:
Hong Kong Will Always Have You
(the small print at the bottom-left: 68,000 persons in the streets)

Ming Pao:
Amid the sounds of celebrating the Return,
March in the streets for universal suffrage
(the subtitle underneath: Civil Human Rights Front: 68,000; HKU: 35,000)

Oriental Daily:
One Country First, Two Systems Later

The Sun: 
Shenzhen West Corridor Bridge opens

Hong Kong Commercial Daily:
Chairman Hu: Hopes Four Insistences in Hong Kong

Hong Kong Daily News:
Ten years after the return:
Bright and shining

Sing Pao:
Four Insistences, tone for political reform

Sing Tao:
President Hu: First improve the economy and people's livelihood

The 7/1 March Crowd Estimates

The July 1st march in Hong Kong is an objective event and yet different organizations come up with different estimates of the number of marchers.  The first post in this series -- The Hong Kong 7/1 March: Crowd Size Estimates -- is in fact the basic material in a Hong Kong University journalism course about media reporting biases.  The preliminary results early this morning are as follows:
 
(Ming Pao via Yahoo)  According to the Hong Kong police, about 20,000 persons departed from Victoria Park to participate in the July 1st march between 2:45pm and 4:30pm.
 
(Ming Pao via Yahoo)  According to the Civil Human Rights Front, the total number of marchers on the July 1st march is 68,000 persons.
 
(Sing Tao via Yahoo)  Hong Kong University Department of Statistics & Actuarial Science senior lecturer Yip Siu-fei and nine students made counts at Causeway Bay and Admiralty supplemented by street intercepts about the points where people joined the march.  Their interval estimate was (28,000, 34,000) with a point estimate of 31,000.
 
(Hong Kong University Public Opinion Programme)

A team of nine people was stationed at the pedestrian overpass at the intersection of Hennessey Road and Arsenal Road.  The counting was done separately by the three traffic lanes.

1530-1559 -- Lane 1: 42; Lane 2: 13; Lane 3: 6.
1600-1629 -- Lane 1: 1515; Lane 2: 2316; Lane 3: 1896.
1630-1659 -- Lane 1: 1255; Lane 2: 2434; Lane 3: 1673.
1700-1729 -- Lane 1: 1622; Lane 2: 2534; Lane 3: 1870.
1730-1759 -- Lane 1: 1367; Lane 2: 2381; Lane 3: 1637.
1800-1829 -- Lane 1: 461; Lane 2: 523; Lane 2: 288.
 
Total: Lane 1: 6262; Lane 2: 10202; Lane 3: 7370
 
Grand total = 23,834.

Last year, HKU POP conducted telephone interviews with those who claimed to have participated and found that 74.9% had passed through the Arsenal Road counting station with a 95% confidence interval of plus or minus 5.9%.  Consequently, the adjustment factor between 1.24 and 1.45 applied to the raw count.  Multiplying 23,834 by 1.24 and 1.45 would yield an estimate of the total number of marchers between 29,000 and 35,000.  The point estimates is 32,000.  HKU POP will be running the telephone interviews again this year.

[Note:  HKU POP provided an interval estimate of (29000,35000) and Ming Pao reported the upper limit of 35000 in its sub-heading.  This is a misuse of statistics.  When an interval estimate is reported and you use to cite only one number, you use the midpoint (and not the upper limit).]

Historical counts

(Apple Daily via Civil Human Rights Front)

1997: 3,000 ("End one-party rule")
1998: 40 ("Vindicate June 4th, release democratic movement activists")
1999: 500 ("Oppose People's Congress interpretation of Hong Kong residency law")
2000: 3,700 ("Down with Tung Chee-hwa, fight for democratic reform")
2001: 700 ("Support universal suffrage, appointment from above is shameful")
2002: 350 ("Down with money power politics, defend dignity of life")
2003: 500,000 ("Oppose Article 23, return government to the people")
2004: 530,000 ("Fight for 2007/2008 universal suffrage")
2005: 21,000 ("Fight for universal suffrage, oppose government-business collusion")
2006: 58,000 ("Fairness and equality in new Hong Kong, democratic universal suffrage creates new hope")
2007: 68,000 ("Fight for universal suffrage, improve people's livelihood")

(Hong Kong University Public Opinion Programme)

2003: 462,000
2004: 193,000
2005: 22,000
2006: 36,000
2007: 32,000 (preliminary)

(Yip Siu-fei, Hong Kong University Statistics and Actuarial Science Department)

2004: 165,000
2005: 17,800
2006: 27,500
2007: 31,000