Appendix 1

China News Digest
Special Series on China and 2000 Olympic Games

CND Survey Report on Readers' Attitude
Towards Beijing's Bid to Host 2000 Olympic Games

• Foreword
  
• The Survey
  
• Readers' Approval of The Beijing's Bidding
  
• Prediction of The Winner of The Bid
  
• About Survey Participants' Background
  
• Conclusion
  

Foreword

For friendship, competition, and conquest, elites of human being are highly motivated to race for the top performance in Olympics Games. For joy, satisfaction, and frustration, Olympic Games always brings our emotions to the peak. It is said that international sport is a war at the peace time in which countries and nations fight with high spirits. If that is true, Olympic Games are world wars repeated every four years in the modern history. Indeed, with all of those medals, flowers, tears, money, and politics, the Olympics is honorable, though not always.

Now, Beijing Municipality is bidding to host the 2000 Olympic Games. This is the very first bid for the Olympics from a Chinese city in history. The International Olympic Committee will make final decision on site selection by the end of September. An overwhelming campaign is taking place in China all over the country. Overseas Chinese community also pays great attention to the development. Here, CND brings you a survey report on readers' attitude towards Beijing's Bidding.

The Survey

This survey was conducted from April 10-22, 1993, as a sampling one. The targeted population for this survey was more than 26,000 CND direct individual subscribers by the time the survey began.

On April 10, the questionnaire was delivered via e-mail to 1305 readers selected by random sampling. The choice of sample size is validated by Krejcie and Morgan's table in "Determining sample size for research activities" (Educational and Psychological Measurement, 1970, v.30, pp607-610). The final sample size is actually 3.44 times larger than the recommanded size of 379 for a population of 30,000. The bigger sample size was based on the consideration that the survey contains six multi-choices, which would increase the possibility of fewer answers chosen.

On April 16, 20, and 22, three follow-up messages were sent to readers who hadn't replied. By the midnight of April 22 — the deadline of the survey—425 replies were received, with 10 more coming after the deadline. We took those late arrivals as valid data as well, considering the delay was possibly due to the malfunction of network mail services. Thus, the total count of replies was 435, among which there were 29 completely empty messages.

The return rate for this survey was 31.11%, not counting those invalid replies (e.g., empty messages and duplicates from same participants). It is believed that this return rate was at a reasonable level to interpret the survey results to the targeted population, especially to those who are interested in the topic.

The following is a brief report about the survey result, in which we provide a brief and rough analysis only. The error margins were reported at the 95% confident level, whenever they were appropriate. We have intentionally left more space for readers to interpret those data with readers' own judgement.

Readers' Approval of The Beijing's Bidding

Our first three survey questions were intended to measure readers' approval level for Beijing's bidding to host the Olympic Games. The result shows that the majority of CND readers maintain a positive attitude for the issue, although there were some obvious concerns.

The first question was designed to test reader's attitude toward's Beijing City Government's campaign, which asks,

It is reported that Beijing City Government is campaigning for the Olympics bid with an enthusiastic effort. This campaign may have some influence on Beijing citizen's daily life. Among the following six statements, you mostly agree that the campaign will, (Choose ONE answer only.)

This question was designed based on the fact that many voluntary and forced donation drives are taking places under such circumstance in China. With 406 replies, 68.64% of them showed an approval attitude towards Beijing Government's bidding effort when citizen's quality of life is concerned. In contract, only 11.60% responses disapproved the campaign in this regard. There are 20% readers felt the citizen's quality of life might not be influenced or the question might not be relevant. They didn't pass a judgement here.

The second and the third questions were closely related. Those were to tap readers approval/disapproval for hosting Olympics games in Beijing in general. Readers were advised to choose all answers applicable, including one option for objection. We received 402 replies to the first question and 392 to the second one. Both questions read,

To assess the outcome of Beijing's bid, you mostly agree that hosting the 2000 Olympic Games will [improve/bring/promote] (Choose ALL answers applicable.)

The results indicate that readers believed that hosting Olympics Games would help understanding of China by people of other countries, boost China's image in the international community, and bring economic benefit to China. On the other hand, readers' most negative concern was the economic burden brought about in the process. Some readers tried to bring up the question, that who will be really benefited when both economic benefit and burden are eventually resulted in.

Please notice that the readers' approval level for hosting Olympics Games in general is noticeably higher than that for Beijing's current bidding campaign when citizen's quality of life is concerned. That is, close to 95% readers feel positively one way or the other for hosting Olympics Games at Beijing, while less than 70% of readers feel Beijing's citizen's quality of life would be improved through the current campaign. This attitude illustrates a great concern with the economic burden possibly brought about to host the Games.

Prediction of The Winner of The Bid

While readers' support to host Olympics Games was strong as shown above, they didn't underestimate the difficulty to win the bid. When we asked readers how strongly they felt that Beijing would win the bid, readers showed a conservatively optimistic attitude for the issue. The question 4, answered by 401 readers, reads,

To predict the result of Beijing's bid, you mostly agree that, the bid will have (choose ONE answer only. Alternatively, you may directly enter your estimated % number.)

Since "No answer" was one of options in the original question, the middle point for those 368 readers who were brave enough to cast their predictions was 58.15%. That is slightly above the necessary 50% faith of winning chance.
The following two questions were to explore readers' arguments that support their predication made above. In the questions, we asked readers to evaluate several perspectives of the current social environment in China and other circumstance that might have major impacts on the outcome of the bidding. The question was,

Among the following aspects, you believe that the strongest (or weakest) one that would lead Beijing to WIN (or LOSS) the bid is, (Choose ALL answers applicable.)

As the results reveal, economic development in China was recognized as a strong card with which people believe Beijing government may play an upper hand. Out of 402 readers, 51.74% readers approving this and 41.49% readers keeping silent. Only 6.77% readers gave a negative credit to the government for economic growth.

However, the domestic political environment can hardly be regarded as a positive side in spite of 72 readers cast a positive vote to this aspect. Out of 399 answers to the negative question, 64.41% of them showed their uneasy feeling, composing an overwhelming objective number reported in this poll. This simply means even though some of those who support the bid with an optimistic attitude, they can't get ride of the political shadows.

When readers provided their own explanations to those questions, more often then not they regarded the largest population, long historical tradition, and a culture of a great variety were the strongest points that could lead to the win. Several readers suggested the timing be favorite to China as well. On the other hand, those who tried to speculate other weak points seemed to fall into the issues of political disputes faced by the government. For instance, some suggested that Chinese government be motivated to fix their political image by hosting the Games. Others felt that the hostile force might take the chance to ruin China's reputation by spoiling the bidding.

Finally, we asked readers to pick the most favorable one among six competing cities. This turned out a tough question since only 384 readers answered, the lowest return rate for all ten questions. The question was,

The city, that you think, will MOST likely win the bid is,

This questions was intended to receive one answer only from each reader. However, quite a few readers just couldn't limit their choices to a single city. As you may see from the chart, Beijing shares the lead with Sydney marginally. Indeed, Milan got out the picture due to scandals when the survey started. Brasilia, Istanbul and Manchester are little known to many readers, Berlin was haunted by its environmentists and other objective parties. Only Sydney and Beijing are backed by their top governments. No wonder readers' judgement on the international competition in this round was favorable to China. But apparently this situation was favorable to Aussies as well in many readers' eyes.

About Survey Participants' Background

This survey also included a section for personal background information, i.e., how long they have been in Mainland China, how long they have been in Beijing, and how long since they left China. We counted 395 answers for those three questions, which we omitted here.

Do these data mean something? Sometimes do and sometime don't. It is noticed that we lack an even distribution for people who have been in Beijing for 1-3 years intervals, as well as those who left China for less than one year.

Indeed, it is hard to find a statistical difference among those who have been in China for various periods, especially when there were too few counts from the group with less than four years of China experience. Thus, one of the reasons for not finding this type of difference could be the shown data which were mainly composed of those who came from the Mainland China. However, analysis shows there is no significant difference for other two background characters in answering this question too.

We checked into the background character distributions for those who feel hosting the Olympic Games would improve China's image and enhance the mutual understanding among people. No significant difference was found as well.

We also didn't find significant difference among answers to several questions about winning predictions, except that we found those who have been in Beijing for four years or more are more favorite Beijing's winning chance over that for Sydney. That is, while this group presented 30.63% of overall sample size, they took 35.36% among those who picked Beijing as the favorite city, and only 28.65% among those who picked Sydney. But this could be regarded as a marginal difference only.

In summary, we found that readers' replies are quite independent from their background characters when dealing questions asked in the survey.

Conclusion

With findings through this survey, it is clear to say that this survey presents reader's viewpoint fairly independent of their background characters.

In general, our readers have a strong support for Beijing to host 2000 Olympic Games, which will be the first time in China if Beijing wins the bid. Most of people feel that hosting Olympics would have several positive impacts to their home country. Although there would be some negative impacts, those might be adjustable in the long run. They give a passable approval for Beijing Government's bidding campaign when citizen's quality of life is concerned.

However, our readers narrowly believe that there are positive chance that Beijing could win the bidding. Readers recognize the economic development taking place in China, while questioning the government's unpopular political image or slow progresses than expected. Based on that, readers tend to believe both Beijing and Sydney would have an equally good chance to win the bid.

Finally, we would like to remind you that CND as a whole takes no stand in conducting such a survey. We are aware that our readers may or may not agree the conclusions drawn based on this survey. However, we believe that readers would appreciate the chance to see how other readers are thinking on this issue.

The International Olympic Committee started their visits to all six bidding cities when this survey began. Now, they have finished their inspection visits. Reports said that the Committee gave all cities favorable feedback when left, hopping the competing cities might take the chance to make more improvement before site selection is finally made. Could Beijing improve and take the win? It will be known on September 23, 1993.