Letters | Hong Kong, divided by protests, needs a platform for open dialogue. Here’s how to design one
- Hong Kong should put its expertise in large-scale surveys to work and launch a two-phase process to collect public opinion, assess ideas and facilitate consensus
- Participants must be drawn from across society and have their identity authenticated
During the idea-collection phase, regional forums would be conducted through a reputable third-party public opinion research institution, perhaps in televised town halls, with respectable public figures or key opinion leaders with no strong political dispositions acting as moderators. The participants would be selected by statistically valid means and preregistered.
Participants should be drawn randomly from the total housing unit database maintained by the census department, stratified by region and further selected according to one or two socio-demographic attributes, so that participants are broadly representative of the wider Hong Kong society. They would be asked to participate on a voluntary basis under a small incentive scheme. Their identity would be verified on site.
All family members of the selected households who are over 15 years old would be invited to participate to ensure the inclusion of the full spectrum of age groups. If 50 to 100 households from four rotating districts are selected every week, about 5,000 people may be interviewed from November 2019 up to the Lunar New Year next year.
A separate online community chat platform, where participants’ identities have been previously authenticated, such as through the preregistered database of, say, Hong Kong Public Library borrowers, can be set up. Here, participants may post their ideas for a better Hong Kong anytime.