Is the dream over? Mainland students rethink Hong Kong over costs and cultural fit

Graduates wearing Guy Fawkes masks throw their hats as they pose for their photo after a graduation ceremony at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong, China, November 7, 2019. Reuters-Yonhap

Weeks before mainland Chinese student Carol Chen graduated from Baptist University in Hong Kong in July, the 22-year-old did the math and weighed the cost of living in the city against returning home.

Renting a room in the city would consume around half of the HK$20,000 ($2,552) starting salary she expected as a junior data analyst.

"If I go back to Shanghai, I will only need to worry about daily expenses," Chen, a maths and statistics graduate, said, referring to money saved by living with her family.

Language barriers compounded the problem. Neither Cantonese nor English was her mother tongue, Chen said, and this disadvantage became more evident at seminars and job interviews.

"Although the companies did not list Cantonese as a requirement, you'll still be rejected if you cannot speak it," she said, adding she felt out of place in local society.

Chen said she was now more inclined to leave after graduation.

This is despite non-local graduates being allowed to stay for two years without a job if they apply for a visa under the Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates (IANG) scheme within six months of graduation.

According to the Immigration Department, there were 27,630 IANG applicants in 2025, up by 8.5 percent from 2024.

Amid the rising number of applicants, a recent survey by the Youth Expats Association found 56.1 percent of mainland students were either actively planning to leave, intending to return to the mainland or hedging their bets by comparing Hong Kong with overseas markets.

Rent and accommodation costs topped the list of concerns, followed by language and cultural barriers, a lack of social networks, a weak sense of belonging, uncertainty over career development and daily living expenses, the association found.

Nancy Wang, 22, a journalism undergraduate from the same university, reached a similar conclusion about the city's high cost of living. But she said her decision to leave Hong Kong after graduating in July was also driven by other factors.

"It's hard to integrate into local [Hong Kong] culture, especially as a newcomer," she said, adding that adapting to dormitory life was especially challenging.

For example, local students often held different activities in the dorm, but they would not tell Wang, and she did not actively engage with them.

"I felt it was important for me to connect with local people, but it was hard to take the first step," Wang said.

Billy Mak Sui-choi, an associate professor at the university's department of accountancy, economics and finance, said mainland master's students faced the greatest challenges in staying in Hong Kong.

He said master's students completed their programmes in as little as nine months, leaving them little time to adapt to Hong Kong's culture or language before entering the job market.

Women talk at West Kowloon Cultural District near Victoria Harbour during sunset in Hong Kong, Oct. 28, 2022. Reuters-Yonhap

"They barely have time to integrate or understand Hong Kong's culture before they are required to look for work, which creates real difficulty," Mak said.

He estimated that about 30 percent of undergraduate students would stay in Hong Kong, while the proportion among postgraduate students would be lower, given the greater number of mainland students and a highly competitive job market.

Mak added that Hong Kong's economy remained dominated by the services sector, which relied heavily on interaction with local residents.

"So if you are targeting those [local] clients, being fluent in Cantonese helps," he said.

Asked whether the departure of mainland graduates posed a significant threat to Hong Kong's economy, Mak said the overall impact was limited.

The deeper problem, he said, was a mismatch between what universities produced and what the economy demanded.

He said the city's real labour shortages existed at both ends of the spectrum - basic blue-collar workers willing to take frontline jobs and high-end professionals or investors who could drive industries.

"We are not short of ordinary junior workers who do not know much [about work] yet. We lack people with professional experience and real capability," Mak said.

He also attributed part of the pressure to artificial intelligence (AI) replacing some entry-level white-collar tasks.

He suggested Hong Kong could learn from some mainland cities by offering subsidised "talent flats" to help fresh graduates manage living costs and gain experience before deciding whether to stay in the city.

For some graduates, however, the balance already tilts in Hong Kong's favour, with higher salaries, a globally recognised passport and a multicultural environment close to home tipping the scales.

Vicky Liu is among them. The 23-year-old master's student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology is considering a career as a product manager or pursuing research in the city.

Liu said she was working as a part-time research assistant, and despite the job being capped at 16 hours a week, she earned HK$8,000 a month, which was enough to cover her basic living expenses.

Liu noted that she would earn little, if anything, if she returned to the mainland to pursue a doctorate or take up a research assistant position.

Beyond pay, she described Hong Kong as a "freer" city with a different system and culture, while still being just a three-hour flight from her home in Qingdao, Shandong province.

She also pointed to the convenience of a Hong Kong passport, which offers visa-free access to a range of destinations.

"To be honest, all I want is permanent residency," Liu said. "I gave up chances to study abroad just for this."

Read the article at SCMP.