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no clear majority in favour of such a move. They were further reduced when, in September during, I was able to tell senior Chinese officials that, although I could not guarantee what the final results would be, our
impression at that time was that there would be no such clear majority. While repeating that in such a case we would not bring in direct elections, I also made it clear that we would need to announce a definite date for their introduction and urged the Chinese to provide in the draft Basic Law clearly for an element of direct elections so that our decisions and their preparations should not appear to diverge.
The Survey Office Report
11. I have noted above that over 130,000 submissions were sent to the Survey Office. 100,000 of these came in the last two weeks. Through a herculean effort the Survey Office nevertheless produced its report on time, on 29 October. Two independent monitors confirmed the following day that the work of the Survey Office had been carried out properly, accurately and impartially. The Survey Office report records in detail the views of the people of Hong Kong on all the issues raised in the Green Paper. The report runs to 76 pages. The appendices, giving details of all pre-printed submissions, public opinion polls and signature campaigns, as well as information on groups and organisations which made submissions, run to a further 1,582 pages. Together these documents represent a fascinating snap-shot of the views of the people of Hong Kong on a variety of political issues.
Suffice
12.
I will not overwhelm you with details. to say that, on the question of direct elections, the survey showed that a very clear majority of people in Hong Kong want an element of direct elections to be introduced into the Legislative Council. Also that they want this to happen before 1997.
13. The picture on timing was less clear. Two public opinion polls conducted independently by a private company commissioned by the Survey Office showed only 12-15% in favour of 1988. Thorough though these polls were (unlike almost every other poll they used personal interviews rather than the telephone), many have criticised them on the grounds that the questions asked were too complicated. Other, simpler public opinion polls conducted by various private organisations, very few using either random sampling or targetting the whole population, produced figures in favour of direct elections in 1988 ranging from 16% to 81% (both these figures being for specific population groups).
Of some of these it might be said that the questions were too simple and too clearly designed to elicit a positive response. (As an interesting by-product, one reputable
/opinion poll
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