If you put "polling" into the biggest Chinese searching website "www.baidu.com," within 0.209 seconds you'll find more than 63,000 pages, along with all sorts of advertisements of polling companies. However, a decade ago, it was impossible to publish non-official statistics for the Chinese media.

During the roundtable meeting on culture of the Fortune Global Forum 2005, Zhao Baige, deputy director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, Victor Yuan, president of Horizon Research Group, and Anthony Saich, Daewoo professor of International Affairs and Faculty Chair of the Asia Programs and the China Public Policy Program, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, talked on how social and economic changes had affected the thinking and behavior of the Chinese.

They agreed that polling, which was introduced to China just a decade ago and is now accepted by the Chinese people and the government, has made information in China more and more transparent.

Polling companies have become more and more popular. Almost every week new polling statistics are being issued.

The Horizon Research Group, built in 1992 by Yuan Yue, who was then a government official with the Ministry of Justice, is a top polling company in China after 13 years of development.

In the beginning, polling companies could only select topics closely related to the daily life of common people, such as how inflation affected people's lives and the living conditions of migrate workers.

The media were interested in topics that governments were likely to cooperate, Yuan said.

He said the most important thing is to let people express their opinions and for decision makers to learn from them.

Zhao said it is very important for the government to know public opinion before it makes policy.

China has so large a population that even a small mistake in decision making can lead to big problems, she said. Saich said the government can adjust its policies by knowing opinions through polling.

He said the Chinese have shown more "individuality" than "collectivity" in the ten years since polling began in the country.

(Xinhua New Agency May 17, 2005)