Hong Kong People’s Trust in Government Plummets: Survey

A recent public opinion survey by the University of Hong Kong found that Hong Kong people’s trust in their government, and in Chinese communist central rule, has dramatically declined, reaching the lowest level in years.

The survey was conducted by the Public Opinion Program at the University of Hong Kong on June 13-16—just two weeks prior to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) 90th anniversary. The method was through random sample telephone calls, with 1,034 people responding.

The survey showed the rate of trust in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HK) government at 34 percent and in the Beijing regime at 31 percent, a drop of 8 and 13 percent from only three months ago. This is the lowest trust level in seven and ten years, respectively.

Adjusting for rate of distribution, HK citizens’ trust in their government is at 6 percent, and zero for Beijing’s communist regime.

Notable is the age distribution in the survey. The younger the group, the less trust they have in the government. The trust rates for age groups 18-29, 30-49, and over 50 are: 21, 28, and 38 percent, respectively.

Chung Ting Yiu Robert, the project director of the survey, said in the analysis that people born after 1980 have higher rates of distrust than those born before 1980. This is likely related to the sentencing in China of Zhao Lianhai, who organized a support group for victims of the melamine-milk scandal, and to the recent detention of Ai Weiwei, as well as the 22nd memorial of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, Chung said.

CCP’s Interference in Hong Kong

HK citizens’ trust in their government, and in the Beijing regime, is dropping because the CCP has intensified its crackdown on human rights activists recently, Sing Ming, an Associate Professor of Social Sciences at HK University of Science and Technology, told The Epoch Times.

“The CCP spares no efforts in oppressing human rights activists in China and makes people believe that China does not need human rights or democratic reforms. It even has created big setbacks on the most basic rule of law,” Sing said.

The distrust also reflects HK citizens’ dissatisfaction with the CCP’s more blatant intervention in Hong Kong’s affairs, according to Sing.

“The CCP does not only interfere with political reform, but exerts an overall influence of interference in Hong Kong’s affairs,” Sing said.

Sing cited the recent visit of Wang Guangya, the CCP State Council director of the HK and Macao affairs offices, as an example. Wang publicly commented on HK affairs on many occasions, which is a danger signal, Sing said.

“In 1997, CCP leaders would merely express their opinions on matters of principle, but Wang commented on specific affairs, such as extreme disparity between [Hong Kong's] rich and poor, and other issues. It actually damaged the ‘one country, two systems’ rule. It is a bad precedent,” Sing said.

“Is the CCP paving the way for a more comprehensive and in-depth involvement in Hong Kong’s politics in the future? It is definitely not a good way of following the ‘one country, two systems’ policy,” Sing added.

Brainwashing

Sing said with the 90th anniversary of its founding this year, the CCP has recently pushed the HK government to “strengthen national education” of school children. In plain language it means, the CCP wants the HK government to teach more communist ideology and propaganda in schools to brainwash the HK people.

In addition, the HK government has made efforts to push the so-called “alternate mechanism,” which refers to the situation when a legislative councilor position becomes vacant, there would be no need to go through an election process, instead, the person with the highest vote from the previous election would fill the position—something obviously directed by the CCP. These are issues HK people should be vigilant about, Sing said.

As for why the people’s trust in the Hong Kong government has dropped, Sing said the public’s dissatisfaction has been building up owing to the recent exposure of a number of incidents. One is the former chief government information officer of HK, Jeremy Richard Godfrey, exposing the HK government for helping pro-CCP groups in bidding for political power in HK. Then there are the cases of unauthorized construction of some senior officials’ residences, and people’s complaints over the budget, and more.

With so much public resentment, Sing said he expects that many more people will take to the streets this July 1 to let the CCP and the HK government know that they are not happy.

Read the original Chinese article.