About Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute

Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute

The Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (HKPORI; 香港民意研究所) is an independent polling organisation in Hong Kong, and for more than three decades — counting its predecessor — the city's most closely watched producer of public opinion data. It was officially registered as a limited company on 19 February 2019, began operating symbolically on 4 May 2019 and came into full operation on 1 July 2019, under its founder, chairman and chief executive Dr Robert Chung. HKPORI is the direct successor to the Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong (HKUPOP), which Chung founded in June 1991, and it inherited that programme's staff, contracts and long-running tracking survey series, including regular measures of ethnic identity, the popularity of the Chief Executive and senior officials, confidence in "one country, two systems" and election voting intention. In February 2025, following national security police actions involving its current and former leadership, the institute announced that it would suspend all self-funded research indefinitely and might transform or close down.

Origins: The Public Opinion Programme at HKU, 1991

The institute's predecessor, the Public Opinion Programme (POP), was set up in June 1991 by Dr Robert Chung as a self-funding unit under the Social Sciences Research Centre, and later the Faculty of Social Sciences, of the University of Hong Kong. Its stated purpose was to "collect and study public opinion on topics which could be of interest to academics, journalists, policy-makers, and the general public" — a mission HKPORI continues. HKUPOP was the first research unit of its kind established by an academic institution in Hong Kong. In 1992 it conducted its first opinion poll on the approval rating of the then Governor, Chris Patten, and members of the Legislative Council, beginning the popularity tracking that became its signature. Over its life the programme published over 60 polls a year at its height and conducted well over 1,500 independent surveys; by the transition in 2019 its own information sheet put the cumulative total at over 1,800 independent surveys and other kinds of research. Its motto, carried over to HKPORI, was "Integrity and Quality (IQ)".

Robert Chung and the 2000 "Pollgate" Affair

HKUPOP's defining early episode was the Robert Chung affair of 2000, also called "Pollgate". Chung alleged that Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa had pressured him, through HKU Vice-Chancellor Cheng Yiu-chung and Pro-Vice-Chancellor Wong Siu-lun, to discontinue publishing his polls on the popularity of Tung and his government, after published results showed government satisfaction and Tung's rating falling to record lows. The university set up a three-member independent investigation panel led by Justice Noel Power, which after 11 days of open hearings concluded that there had been "covert attempts" to pressure Chung and found Chung to be an honest witness telling the truth. The vice-chancellor and pro-vice-chancellor resigned before the University Council met on 9 September 2000. The affair became a landmark in Hong Kong debates about academic freedom, and it cemented Chung's and POP's public reputation for independence — the programme continued, was transferred briefly to the Journalism and Media Studies Centre in May 2000 and back to the Faculty of Social Sciences in January 2002, and grew in authority thereafter.

Spin-Off in 2019: Registration, Launch and Continuity

On 23 April 2019 it was announced that POP would leave the university and continue as a new private, independent organisation, a decision made partly because of Chung's impending retirement from HKU. HKPORI had already been registered in Hong Kong as a limited company on 19 February 2019; it started operating on 4 May 2019 — a date its launch materials associated with the May Fourth tradition — held its first public activity around 1 July 2019, and took over fully on 1 July 2019. All of POP's staff transferred to the new institute, all previously existing contracts were honoured, and most staff chose to stay when their contracts ended. Within HKPORI, a Hong Kong Public Opinion Program (HKPOP) continued the survey work. The institute described itself as a "civil society conscientious enterprise", aiming to serve the interest of civil society while meeting corporate responsibilities, and said it aspired to become Hong Kong's parallel of institutions such as the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University. Its founding information sheet estimated that a capital of HK$6 million was required to kick-start HKPOP.

What HKPORI Measured: Tracking Surveys and Indices

HKPORI's core product was its self-funded tracking surveys, covering about 25 broad topics and almost 250 opinion questions in its predecessor's design. Its regular releases measured the popularity of the Chief Executive, the directors of bureaux and other senior officials; public satisfaction with the government; Hong Kong people's ethnic identity — the long-running question asking whether residents identified as "Hongkongers", "Chinese" or in mixed terms; confidence in "one country, two systems" and in Hong Kong's future; trust in governments and institutions; and voting intention around elections. It compiled a Public Sentiment Index (PSI), designed to quantify Hong Kong people's sentiments in order to explain and predict the likelihood of collective behaviour. It also ran feature studies, including its long-running anniversary survey on the June Fourth incident, released for the last time by HKUPOP in June 2019, and releases combining survey findings with measures such as its 2022 release of people's most familiar political figures alongside a governance-related index. Media organisations across Hong Kong treated these releases as a shared factual reference point for the public mood.

Methods, Services and Professional Standing

HKPORI's published releases typically rested on random telephone surveys conducted by real interviewers — a February 2022 release, for example, reported successfully interviewing 1,002 Hong Kong residents in a random telephone survey conducted in late February of that year — with survey dates, sample sizes and speaker materials published alongside the findings, and its archive of past releases maintained online, including on its predecessor's site. In its full development plan, the institute envisaged different arms handling public opinion research, market research, policy research, electronic voting, civil referendum, social engagement, panel studies, election studies, deliberation studies, consultancy studies, data archiving, big data mining, regional networking and international cooperation, building on services the team had provided to public and private organisations since 1991. Its founder's professional standing reinforced its authority: Robert Chung, born on 7 September 1957, a retired HKU assistant professor, served for years as Hong Kong's representative at the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR), was elected WAPOR vice president and president-elect in 2020 and president for 2023–2024, and received the WAPOR Asia Pacific Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022.

Pressure After 2020: Raids and Self-Censorship of Topics

The institute's operating environment changed sharply after Beijing imposed the national security law on Hong Kong in 2020. In 2020 and 2021, police raided HKPORI's office after it helped pro-democracy activists organise an informal primary election. In 2023, the institute stopped publishing polling data on topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown and Taiwan independence — subjects deemed taboo by Beijing. These steps narrowed, but did not end, its published output: it continued its popularity and identity tracking, which repeatedly recorded low ratings for the government and strong local identity sentiment, and its findings continued to be cited as evidence in debates about press freedom, governance and public trust in Hong Kong.

December 2024 – January 2025: Warrant, Search and Questioning

In December 2024, Hong Kong's National Security Department issued a warrant, with a HK$1 million bounty, for the institute's former deputy chief executive, Chung Kim-wah, accusing him of inciting secession and colluding with foreign forces. Chung Kim-wah, a former HKPORI researcher and political commentator who had left for the United Kingdom in April 2022, said he had severed ties with his former employer. In January 2025 the pressure reached the institute itself: on 13 January 2025 national security police searched HKPORI's office and took away chief executive Robert Chung for questioning on suspicion of using his own company to render assistance to a wanted person who had absconded overseas, in continuing activities said to endanger national security; other staff members, and family members of Chung Kim-wah, were also questioned in the following weeks, though no arrests of HKPORI staff were reported. The institute responded publicly to media enquiries about the warrant for its former deputy, summarising its position for the media and the public.

February 2025: Suspension of Self-Funded Research

On 13 February 2025 HKPORI announced that it would "suspend all its self-funded research activities indefinitely, including its regular tracking surveys conducted since 1992, and all feature studies recently introduced", and that it would undergo a transformation or even close down. Robert Chung said he welcomed interested parties to take over the institute or negotiate a purchase of it, and that he planned to promote professional development around the world until his current term ended after 2026. Subsequent reporting on 20 February 2025 said the institute had started a process of disbanding. Commentators quoted in coverage of the announcement — including journalists and data advocates in Hong Kong — described the tracking surveys as an important weather-vane of public sentiment and the suspension as a loss for information transparency in the city. The decision ended, at least for the time being, a publishing run that had begun in the final years of British colonial rule, continued through the 1997 handover, and provided Hong Kong's longest continuous independent record of its own public opinion.

Legacy as a Publisher of Record

Whatever its final organisational form, HKPORI's place in this directory rests on its output. For 28 years as a university programme and nearly six more as an independent institute, its team published regular, methodologically documented survey data on questions no official body was asking in the same way: how Hong Kong people identified themselves, how they rated those who governed them, and how confident they were in the constitutional arrangement under which they lived. Its archive — press releases, datasets and commentary reaching back to 1991 — remains a primary source for scholars, journalists and policymakers studying Hong Kong's social and political development. Its history, from the vindication of the 2000 investigation panel to the suspension of 2025, also makes it a case study in the conditions under which independent social research can be produced and published in Hong Kong.