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In October, Chief Executive Carrie Lam presented the 2018 Policy Address. A telephone survey was conducted from 15 to 22 October 2018 by the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, to gauge public views on the Policy Address. It was found that the overall rating for the 2018 Policy Address was 52.8 points and was over the passing mark. A total of 52.5% of the respondents said ‘no change’ when asked about their confidence in governance capacity after the presentation of the Policy Address. 

Major findings are summarised as follows

Satisfaction and Ratings of the 2018 Policy Address. A total of 35.8% of the respondents showed satisfaction towards the new Policy Address, 28.8% said they were unsatisfied and 33.6% answered ‘in-between’. The corresponding figures for the 2017 Policy Address were 43.0%, 17.5%, and 37.5%, respectively. Statistical analysis (Chi-squared test) shows that the results for the 2018 Policy Address were significantly different from those for the 2017 Policy Address. In addition, the overall rating of the 2018 Policy Address (on a point scale ranging from 0 to 100, 50 as a passing mark) was 52.8 points, whereas the rating for the 2017 Policy Address was 58.9 points. Statistical analysis (t-test) found that the difference was statistically significant.

Satisfaction with Selected Policy Areas. The respondents were also asked about their satisfaction level on selected policy areas in the 2018 Policy Address. For housing and land supply, 29.0% were satisfied, 34.3% answered ‘in-between’ and 33.9% were dissatisfied. For transport, 23.2% expressed either satisfaction. 42.9% answered ‘in-between’ and 25.4% expressed dissatisfaction. Whereas 35.6% of the respondents were satisfied with labour and welfare, 50.1% answered ‘in-between’ and only 7.9% were dissatisfied. Concerning the area of education, 28.8% of the respondents were satisfied, 43.2% answered ‘in-between’, and only 19.3% showed dissatisfaction. Lastly, in the area of health care, 33.9% of the respondents showed satisfaction, 46.0% answered ‘in-between’ and only 15.4% were dissatisfied.

Most Satisfactory Policy Area. When the respondents were asked to select the most satisfactory policy area, most selected labour welfare (19.3%) and health care (18.4%), followed by housing and land supply (15.0%), education (7.5%), and transport (4.8%). 18% of the respondents answered that none was satisfactory.

Confidence in Governance Capacity. The respondents were also asked about their confidence in the governance capacity of the SAR Government after the presentation of the Policy Address. Only 17.0% answered that their confidence in governance capacity was boosted, 26.2% felt that their confidence was reduced and 52.5% said ‘no change’.

Helpfulness for Hong Kong Long-term Strategy Development. When being asked if the current Policy Address was helpful for Hong Kong long-term strategy development, 27.4% of the respondents said it was ‘quite helpful’ (20.0%) or “very helpful” (7.4%), 44.0% believed it was ‘a little bit helpful’ and the other 11.9% thought it was ‘not helpful at all’.

In this survey, a total of 706 respondents aged 18 or above were successfully interviewed, with a response rate of 36.2%. The sampling error is estimated at plus or minus 3.69 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.