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

On the issue of counting the number of participants in the April 11 Procession, I have issued an open statement some time ago, which can be found at our HKU POP Site. This article elaborates the points I have made.

I always believe that if and when a professional or academic becomes involved in some social surveys, whether initiated by the public or private sector, there must not be any ambiguity in one's rights and responsibilities. I was therefore disappointed when the government did not at first release the name of the research organization responsible for the head-count. This discredited the study and blurred the responsibility of the parties involved. As a matter of fact, prevailing international standards on public opinion research normally require, when releasing the result of any survey, the disclosure of the names of the sponsors and researchers. Our government and society should advance with time, and get connected to the international community.

Although I was involved in counting the number of participants in both the July 1 and New Year Rallies, I did not participate in any discussion or operation involving the estimation of the number of participants in the April 11 Procession. As a matter of fact, I was not even aware of the operation. Had a tender really been sent to me, I would have replied in the same way as before: That HKU POP would not participate in any survey which does not guarantee academic independence.

This said, I still welcome the government's move to embark on scientific surveys to estimate the number of participants in different processions, in order to get to the truth. Since the government has taken such a high profile, it should pledge itself to repeat the same exercise with the same method for all large-scale public gatherings and processions in future. "Large-scale" can be defined as anything with 5,000 or more participants.

For such exercises, it would be very important for the government to use the same method throughout, because different methods of quantification and operation can yield different results. For example, high altitude still-camera photography may be able to register the amount of surface area occupied by participants at a fixed point in time. Multiplied by density, the number of participants at that point in time could be estimated. Fixed points counting, on the other hand, may be able to estimate the numbers of participants passing through certain check points during a fixed period of time. Both methods, however, fail to take into consideration the amount of man-flow in and out of the procession, may it be just one person, or ten, or thousands of people. As such, both methods are bound to under-estimate the number of participants, because they both take the lower bracket. The government figure of 7,627 released on April 13 was definitely one such under-estimation, beyond doubt.

As a matter of fact, the head-count of 7,627 released by the Central Policy Unit, the Police figure of 10,000 released on the day, counting only the number of people passing through the buffer zone in the Western District Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park, and the figure of 20,000 released by the Civil Human Rights Front on the same day, were extremely different from one another. All three parties now bear the responsibility of explaining their survey methods in detail, as well as releasing their raw figures. Taking one step further, the government should once and for all explain the methods and results of all its previous exercises in estimating the number of participants in different public gatherings and processions, so that such information could become public information. The government should de-mythicize those figures, in order to develop a knowledge-base civil society.

To avoid irrational arguments, the government should get in touch with professional bodies, like the Hong Kong Statistical Society and the Hong Kong Society of Accountants, as soon as possible, in order to openly and transparently devise a scientific method of head-counting. Even if the government finally decides to go on its own way, it should at least have such exercises conducted by its relatively more independent departments, like the Audit Commission and the Census and Statistics Department. At the end of the day, such number crunching exercises are all meant to bring out the objective truth, not the good or bad. In an advanced and civilized society, one idea is one idea, one single opinion is one single opinion. For good ideas, we cannot afford to miss even one; but for bad practices, one is already too many.