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3.13 As explained in paragraph 2.19 the Office received a number of informal collections of views from groups of people sharing a common background but not forming an organization in the sense of being able to express a representative corporate view. There were 249 of these group submissions coming mainly from groups of civil servants, groups of students, people attending welfare agencies, staff of commercial firms, and various other groups. Altogether some 6,000 people expressed their views in this way and generally indicated clear support for the draft agreement. Of those who did not find the draft agreement acceptable, five groups of some 300 people in all used stencilled forms in identical terms expressing their rejection of the draft agreement, mainly on the grounds of total distrust of the com- munist régime in China.
Views Expressed by Individuals
3.14 This was the most difficult category to deal with in the context of assessing overall acceptability because of shades of opinions expressed and the tone of the language used; in many cases, the writers simply asked questions, made suggestions, expressed concern or made comments on specific aspects. These concerns and comments have all been taken into account and included in the summaries in Chapter 4. But on the question of overall acceptability, just over 1,000 individuals have indicated a clear stand. Of these, 677 indicated positive acceptance of the draft agreement and 364 rejected it. The range of individual views is described in Part II of this Chapter.
Opinion Surveys
3.15 The findings of various independent opinion surveys described in paragraph 2.23 and in Appendix VIII indicated general acceptance of the draft agreement. Although the surveys were of varying reliability and validity, the consistency of the findings on the general question of overall acceptability is worthy of note.
3.16 The findings of some of the surveys may be of significance:-- (a) Survey by the Survey Research Hong Kong Ltd. (SRH)(®): This survey which was carried out by a professional market research company, was based on a random sample of 6,124 respondents aged 18 or over throughout Hong Kong and door-to-door interviews were conducted. The published report of this major survey was not available to the Office at the time of writing this report, nevertheless, this Office has studied the tabulations of survey data which were received on 15 November. In answer to one of the main questions in the survey (after reading visual aids briefly describing various sections in the draft agreement): "Taking the agreement as a whole now, do you believe the terms of this agreement are a good thing for the people of Hong Kong or a bad thing for them?", 10 per cent said "
very good", 71 per cent "quite good ", 14 per cent "good in some way not so good in others ", 1 per cent "not particularly good nor at all good" and 4 per cent don't know".
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(8) Survey Research Hong Kong Ltd (SRH) is one of the largest market research companies in Hong Kong.
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