Last week, Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (PORI) announced that the “We Hongkongers” initiative will be suspended. During the press conference, a reporter asked whether the Institute had to shelve the project because of a lack of funding. Director Robert Chung explained that the project did not incur much cost, but since the Institute was mainly funded by donations, it had to be used appropriately. In response to changes in the social environment, it is normal for the Institute to review the mode of operation of its programs. And I think we all have to admit that Hong Kong has undergone a very rapid change in the recent past.

As one of the people in charge of the “We Hongkongers” project, allow me to explain the original intent of the initiative and the current challenges. Public opinion surveys are based on science with an emphasis on being objective and impartial. However, at the same time, public opinion polls have their own political influence and are part of public sentiment. Therefore, we have to admit that the process of constructing the questions itself will also affect the social agenda. If certain issues are not addressed in public opinion surveys, there is no way for society to discuss them in a pragmatic manner. The unique feature of the “We Hongkongers” project is that it reverses the control over the formulation of questions, and invites the public to make submissions for adding specific questions to the poll.

Compared to the long-term tracking surveys conducted by academia, questions asked by the public are often more to the point. For example, there have been polls on people’s confidence in Hong Kong’s one country, two systems since 1993. In June this year, in response to a request from the public, the “We Hongkongers” survey asked the public whether they agree that Hong Kong has changed from one country, two systems to one country, one system (survey result: 50% agree, 43% disagree). Take another example, compared to the police satisfaction survey that has been conducted since the establishment of SAR, in November last year, some people suggested asking directly “If you encounter conflict between the police and civilians on the street, would you be fearful of the police or the protesters” (survey result: 59% police, 29% protesters).

However, with the persistent protests and the consolidation of social opinions, we began to find that although the questions in each survey were different, the results were similar. The opinion of citizens on the democratic side was highly unanimous, with 90% of them always in opposition to the government, and the difference was simply over or under 95% each time.

In this regard, we can think of several possible explanations. First, today’s Hong Kong government no longer cares about what the pro-democracy sector thinks, so it has no qualms about constantly introducing practices that are utterly unacceptable to them. This explanation seems to be the most consistent with what many Hong Kong people have been experiencing in recent months, as they feel that the government’s policy goes against the people when they watch the government’s press conferences every day. The second explanation may be that the democratic public is prejudiced against the government, so they will oppose whatever the government proposes. I have some reservations about this explanation because, in fairness, we try to avoid specifying in the question that a certain opinion comes from the government or pro-government individuals. We would just generalize the question by saying that “There is a saying in society,” so theoretically, the poll response is the opinion itself. Finally, there is another possibility: the people who suggested the poll questions were selective, and particularly liked to ask questions that are within clear boundaries. But on the other hand, how many opinions on public issues in Hong Kong today are not influenced by political stances?

Sometimes people’s opinions on public affairs issues can have a strange relationship with their political stance. For example, in June this year, a member of the public proposed a survey on whether the immediate family members of senior government officials should renounce their foreign nationalities. The percentage of support from the democratic camp was much higher than that of the non-democratic camp. In a normal society, we would expect those who are more politically enlightened to be more tolerant of national issues. However, it is obvious that Hong Kong people were not thinking about national issues but rather what they saw as the hypocrisy of senior officials on national issues. It is worth noting that more than half of the non-democratic citizens supported the spouses and children of senior officials to give up their foreign nationalities, which made it difficult to find a unanimous position between the democrats and non-democrats on this question.

As one of the few remaining legal channels to voice their opinions, it is understandable that people would like to express their dissatisfaction with the government through public opinion surveys. Every week, the Institute receives poll proposals which are obviously aimed to criticize the government, and we would professionally modify the wordings to ensure the neutrality of the questions. As we see more and more indignation in the suggestions, we can also feel the magnitude of grievances in Hong Kong society.

In light of this social climate, the project leaders feel that continuing to chase the weekly headlines with relevant polls may not be the most effective way to contribute to the community. We still believe that it is valuable to launch polls on immediate issues. However, we need more time to consider how to redesign the research methodology in response to social changes while maintaining the “bottom-up” approach. As a result, we decided to suspend the initiative.

Lastly, I would like to thank all those who have helped in various ways since the inception of the project, and those who have participated in our past surveys. In July this year, we released the results of our survey on “Judging from the current situation, how much do you support or oppose the saying that Hong Kong is a free city.” On the same night, the police came to PORI with a search warrant, which many foreign media reported as very ironic. I am afraid the challenges ahead will only increase, but fortunately, there are many people who are willing to tackle them together with us.

(Leung Kai-chi, current affairs commentator)

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