A recent Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) poll found that Hong Kong people trust the city’s government as much as they trust the central Chinese government. One in six Hongkongers said they don’t trust Hong Kong government one bit, while one in five said they don’t trust the central authorities at all.
On a scale of 0 (no trust at all) to 10 (total trust), Hong Kong people gave, on average, a score of 4.02 to the local government and 4.05 to the Beijing government, meaning the poll participants trust the latter ever so slightly more than the former. We understand that Hongkongers are a little bitter towards the local government right now, but at least they don’t censor the Internet, own the media, and make people disappear… But don’t worry! The difference is not statistically significant, meaning that the two governments are trusted roughly equally, according to Paul Lee, a professor at CUHK who is a leader on the project. Good to know!
CUHK’s Center for Communication and Public Opinion performed the survey earlier this month as part of their Public Opinion and Political Development Studies project. They interviewed more than 1,000 Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong residents aged 16 or above about various political development issues.
A modest majority of those surveyed (53.7 percent) believe that LegCo should reject Beijing’s draft for the methods of the 2017 election of the chief executive, while three out of ten (29.3 percent) think that it should be approved.
A little under half, 46.4 percent, said they did not support Occupy Central, while 31.3 percent said they strongly or “quite supported” the pro-democracy movement. One in five Hong Kong are “so-so” about the topic, whatever that means. Unsurprisingly, the younger you are, the more likely you are to support Occupy Central. Oh, youth.
Hongkongers are pretty evenly split on how they think the police have handled protests the assemblies in the past year: 36.5 percent believe it has not been not appropriate, 30.5 percent think it was appropriate, and 29.5 percent think it was “so-so”.
Four out of ten Hongkongers (39.5 percent) consider themselves to be democrats, a quarter (24.1 percent) consider themselves middle-neutral, and 9.1 percent see themselves as pro-establishment (including pro-Beijing). A surprising 21.5 percent said they did not belong to any particular political orientation, and 5.8 percent said they did not know or that they refused to answer. Even after all that the city’s pro-Beijing and pro-democracy activists have done, people still don’t know what’s going on, or lack an opinion about it all. Sigh.
When asked about their level of optimism on the future of Hong Kong, with 0 being “extremely pessimistic” and 10 being “extremely optimistic”, the average score people gave was 4.22. So, Hong Kong people don’t trust anyone and don’t think much of the future either. Great! Prozac anyone?
Some people are just considering packing up and leaving: one in five Hongkongers consider emigrating from Hong Kong.
