Horizon claimed to be the first non-government polling company in China that has established a public influence.

Mr. Yuan Yue (Victor), upon resigning from the Ministry of Justice in 1992, met leaders from Gallup and set up the company with five partners, aiming for collect public opinion for public policy makers.

The founder and now Chairman of Horizon Group went to Harvard for MPA and Beijing University for his PhD in sociology. When he was working for the Ministry of Justice, he was responsible for collecting and summarizing “public opinion” for the high-ranks to make decision. The “opinion” he worked on was reported from the lower level of administrations, and he always doubted whether those highly selected materials could represent the real public opinion.

When interviewed by Nanfang Daily early this year, he said that to improve the policy making process, it is essential to collect real, high quality information. Not that all the public opinions are good, and right. But is it important to put together views from various perspectives to give decision makers a more balanced reference.

In its first year of operation, Horizon’s five polling projects were not for immediate profit but had strong social influence. The company did China’s first polling on floating population in the countryside, first polling on China’s private sector’s enterprisers, and on the sense of public security in cities. They were the first to do large scale polling about underground sex workers (funded by DFID), the first systematic polling on China’s middle class, etc.

“The policy a government makes is actually a public product, only sells well when it goes with public opinion,” Yuan said to Nanfang Daily, “our goal is to make more leaders understand people’s view when they are making decisions.”

The company invested a lot of money on social survey, which later can be either funded by international foundations or bought by research institutions, and exert a huge social impact. In the long term, Horizon didn't lose any money polling on public affairs; Yuan believed that this reflected the intrinsic need for public policy information.

The company has over 200 staff, more than half of them has a master degree, 12 PhDs, 16 overseas returnees. Clients are from Chinese government organizations 5%, UN and foreign government organizations 5%, Chinese enterprises 40%, MNCs and JVs 45%, overseas research firms 5%.

Following are some of their interesting cases in the past two years.
  
- Attention rate of 16th NCCPC, 2002.9.30-10.13
Horizon and sohu.com did a joint online survey before the opening of the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. 10682 people filled the online questionnaire. Among them, +70% claimed they pay attention to the event, 30% pay close attention. This resulted was verified by choosing the right from-to date of NCCPC from the provided answers.

Where is the motive? Nearly 50% said “the conference is related to our life and work”, around 40% said they are generally concerned with the hot social issues. People hoped the conference would “help to solve” the following issues: income, employment, health care, housing, etc.

- Supporting rate for city mayors and county leaders, 2003
The polling showed that the average city mayor-supporting rate is 58% in China, with Beijing’s mayor on top at 70.5%.

The project is said to be the first independent public opinion polling on the high rank government officials in China. It started from familiarity to the mayor – can you tell his full name, to how they get to know and like their mayor’s image, policy and performance, and finally asked “if you had the right to vote now, would you vote for your currently leader?”

10.1% said they “definitely will” vote for the current leader, 35.1% “maybe will”, 14.4% “maybe not”, 7.5 “definitely not”, the others were either not interested to tell or find it hard to tell.

Statistics showed that city mayors were recognized by citizens by the following elements: personal image (47.6%), care for citizens (46.3%), and then policy plan (40.9%) and actual performance (38.5%). The lowest rank of element is honesty and uprightness (26.3%).

County leaders enjoyed less support from their people compared with the big city mayors, only 3 leaders out of the 7 covered counties have a +50% supporting rate.

The first round of polling covered 7 cities in April (Changchun, Ha’erbin, Nanjing, Hefei, Fuzhou, Shenzhen and Chegndu), the second round of polling covered 6 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Shenyang, Xi’an) and 7 counties (Zhuji. Changle, Beining, Xinji, Lingxiang, Pengzhou, and Xinping) in October.

The pollsters interviewed 5613 people age +18 at home. 3621 people were urban dwellers, 1992 lived in counties and on farms.

- Taiwan Problem, 2003
The polling showed that a “majority” of mainland citizens couldn’t tolerate Taiwan independence; nearly 60% of them advocated for strengthen economic exchange to promote the re-unification.

14.7% support to solve the problem now by force. 13.2% believe we should remain the situation now and finally it might resort to force to solve the problem. 11.3% cannot make a judgment due to “lacking appropriate information”.

Further analysis discovered that the majority of the people who believe economic cooperation will finally bring re-unification are age 26-35, above college education, medium/high income male urban dwellers. Core members of “keep the situation” are age 36-45, medium/low income female urban dwellers, and most of the people who advocate solving the problem now by force are male farmers.

This polling covered 3968 people (age +16) from 7 major cities (Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, etc) and counties and villages in 7 provinces (Hebei, Zhejiang, etc)