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Note: This article represents the view of the author and not the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The HKSAR government rushes to finish the legislative process for Article 23 by July, holding the rationale that many citizens support so doing, or at least do not oppose in principle. Is such a claim really the truth? A latest public opinion nevertheless shows that the majority of Hong Kong citizens so far still oppose the legislation in principle; and after discussion and amendments by the Government for many months, citizens still cannot accept the legislative provisions bill.

The government, from September to December in the last year, collected citizens' opinions towards the legislation of Article 23, and published a 19-volume Compendium of Submissions on Article 23 of the Basic Law. According to the government's categorization of public opinion, the majority of the citizens who had expressed their opinions did not oppose legislation in principle. Yet The Research Team on the Compendium of Submissions on Articles 23 of the Basic Law, comprising a group of scholars (including the writer), reanalyzed the submissions collected by the government and has yielded a different result.

The Research Team split citizens' opinions towards legislation into two levels, namely "whether support legislation in principle" and "whether support the concrete proposed legislation content". We find that depending on the unit of analysis (details please refer to Appendix), there is a great disparity in citizens' attitude towards legislation in principle, and there are concerns about the proposed legislation content. However, the government mainly just made simple analyses on the approximately 7,000 individual submissions, claiming that there were more citizens favouring legislation. Apparently the government's stand is that citizens should not discuss any further whether legislation is needed or not, what can be negotiated is just the concrete content of the proposed provisions. The two camps of proponents and opponents scarcely talked about the legislation principle issue since there were no other survey data for reference.

The methodology adopted by the government for collecting public opinion is very problematic. Since the submissions were submitted by citizens or organizations of their own free will, the data got may be pointless. Although there were as many as 8,000 individual submissions from citizens, in addition to standard letters and signature forms which included nearly 370,000 citizens' opinions, a large number of people does not necessarily mean representativeness. The key point is that these opinions were selected through a self-selective but not a random process.

In order to understand public opinion, the most accurate way undoubtedly is a referendum conducted by the government; another more cost-effective yet still highly accurate method is a public opinion survey with scientific random sampling. Sadly, neither is the government interested in a referendum for the legislation of Article 23, nor has it launched an open public opinion survey. The government may have conducted public surveys yet have not released the results to public so the citizens' real thoughts remain unknown.

The Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong, in a public opinion telephone interview conducted in mid-June of this year, asked citizens three questions concerning the legislation of Article 23 issue: 1) Generally do you support or oppose the legislation of Article 23 by the SAR government in principle? 2) Generally do you support or oppose the initial proposals for the legislation of Article 23 by the government? 3) Generally do you support or oppose the concrete content of the National Security (Legislative Provisions) Bill by the government at present? This survey successfully interviewed 1,043 people, with a response rate of 68%, and a standard error of 1.5%. From the research methodology and the technical data, the result yielded from this survey should be representative and can truly reflect citizens' opinion.

The Appendix lists out citizens' opinions towards the legislation of Article 23 using different categorization. On the issue of "whether support legislation in principle", the analyses on the about 8,000 individual submissions by categorized by the government and the research team are similar: i.e. about 50% supported whereas 35% opposed. But if all the submissions, standard letters and signature forms (370,000 people in total) are included as the data for analysis, the research team finds that there are only 35% proponents whereas as many as 65% opposed.

This survey conducted by the HKU also finds that the majority of the citizens oppose legislation in principle-only 20% supported whereas 52% opposed, those who opted for "Half-half" or "Hard to say" constitute 28%. If only opinions in favour or against are counted, the ratio is 1:2.5 or 28% vs 72%.

Concerning the concrete proposed legislation content, using different channels and counting methods also show great difference in the result of the public opinion. From the analysis result by the research team on the about 8,000 individual submissions, those supporting the government's proposed legislation content constituted 53% whereas 44% opposed. But if the target of analysis is the 370,000 people represented by the submissions, the research team finds that there are only 35% proponents while as many as 63% are opponents.

One of the questions in the public opinion survey by the HKU is on the initial proposed legislation content of Article 23. Result shows that only 13% support, 44% oppose while the rest are the "Half-half" or "Hard to say". Obviously citizens have considerable reservations on the government's initial proposed legislation content as opponents far outnumbered proponents. Later on the government made amendments on the initial proposals and issued the National Security (Legislative Provisions) Bill, the HKU public opinion survey finds that citizens' views on the Bill and the initial proposal content are similar - opponents more than proponents. After discussions for more than half a year, the government has made further concessions but there is no great difference on the citizens' views between the latest legislation content and the initial proposals, only 3% rise in the number of proponents and 5% drop in that of opponents. The figures indicate that if the provision content has problems in essence, the technical amendments made by the government are of no use. They can by no means eliminate citizens' worries.

Further analysis of the data from the HKU public opinion survey reveals that, on the socio-demographic characteristics, more females than males oppose to the principle and the content of Article 23 legislation; younger respondents tend to have the opposing stand and the more educated the people, the more of them opposed to the legislation. Concerning occupation, most people who are against legislation are professionals, civilian staff, those employed in the service sectors and students whereas proponents are more likely to be non-technical labourers and housewives.

On the opinions and attitudes expressed, those who opposed legislation are generally dissatisfied with the policy direction of Tung Chee-Hwa, dissatisfied with the overall performance of the SAR government, do not trust the SAR government, do not have confidence on both the prospect of Hong Kong as well as the "one country, two systems" policy. On the political orientation, most of those who are more identified with the stand of the democrats are against legislation (87% opposed while only 8% supported); those who are identified with the pro-china parties support legislation (17% opposed and 79% supported); but amongst those who are "neutral" or don't think they have a political orientation, opponents are still the majority (60%) and only 30% support.

To conclude, the typical characteristics of those who support the legislation are above 50 years of age, have only primary education level, being housewives or labourer, identified with pro-china parties on the political orientation, satisfied with the performance of the Chief Executive and the SAR government, trust the government, have confidence in the prospect of Hong Kong and "one country, two systems". Those who are against legislation consist of marginally more females than males, age below 50, have secondary or tertiary education level, being professionals, civilian staff, technical staff, employed in the service sectors or students, tend to identify with democrats or have no clear stand on political orientation, dissatisfied with the performance of the Chief Executive and the government, do not trust the government, have no confidence on both Hong Kong's prospect and "one country, two systems".

The citizens' submissions collected by the government during the consultation period for the proposals to implement Article 23 of the Basic Law are actually not representative and have no important value for reference which is an inherent weakness even if correct analysis method is adopted. Such a way of collecting public opinion is easily manipulated and what is yielded may be fake public opinion. Compared with scientific public opinion survey result, its weakness is more obvious. We hope that when the government is to make important policy that needs consulting the public, don't use a sloppy or even a made-up approach, otherwise only incomplete and misrepresented information will be obtained which does not help in the discussion of the issue; worse still, the credibility of the government would be ruined when revealed. The government should learn an important lesson from this consultation.

The government failed to change the views of Hong Kong people through the several-month-long discussions of Article 23 because it cannot fulfill citizens' expectations, it has though made amendments on the proposed legislation content. Moreover, the government officials adopt the strategy of "two concessions, one forward move" to sell the legislation content, while canceling or relaxing some provisions, new worrying provisions are proposed. The government gives us an impression of bargaining instead of sincerely doing a good job for the well-being of the public. What a responsible government should do is to genuinely collect and listen to public opinion with scientific research methodology and take actions based on the interest of Hong Kong citizens.