Why So Many Students Choose to Study in Hong Kong

Preface

Time flies. It has been a full year since I went to Hong Kong for a master’s degree in September 2024. Although I have not spent that much time in Hong Kong during the year—perhaps only several dozen days in total—the city’s distinctive character has deeply impressed me.

I am a typical small-town test taker. I never left the county town for study in junior or senior high school. As I recall, my first visit to the provincial capital was for a special-admission examination at a Project 985 university after the college entrance examination. I first left the province only after entering university, on a trip to Shanghai with classmates during the summer of my freshman year at age eighteen. As for going abroad or outside the mainland, embarrassingly, I had never done it before working and then studying for a master’s degree.

So, taking this first anniversary of study as an opportunity, I would like to talk about my year of overseas study from the perspective of a worker who returned to education after working. This is the first article in a series. It mainly introduces differences between Hong Kong—especially its education—and mainland China. Friends interested in studying in Hong Kong are also welcome to message me for details.

Where do Hong Kong and mainland China differ?

This section will not focus on simple differences in daily life, such as language and transport. Its focus is on the different positioning of Hong Kong and the background of “one country, two systems.”

Hong Kong through “one country, two systems”

After I went to Hong Kong for the start of term last year, I was initially just curious about a different environment—for example, signage everywhere is in traditional Chinese and English, and I never saw Mandarin or Pinyin. Later I found that Hong Kong’s institutions are indeed fundamentally different from those on the mainland.

Under “one country, two systems,” Hong Kong’s foreign affairs, sovereignty, and military are managed centrally, while other systems—such as legislation, justice, prosecution, speech, and finance—are decided by the Hong Kong government itself. After entering Hong Kong, one finds that speech controls and ideology are completely different from the mainland. As I recall, Luo Yonghao and Zhou Hongyi both had experiences of being summoned by mainland police and fleeing to Hong Kong, because Hong Kong’s judicial independence prevents mainland police from enforcing law across the border. Hong Kong’s financial system is also closer to Western systems; its payment habits are nearly identical to Europe and the United States. Similarity in financial systems is one reason there are more foreigners in Hong Kong. A Hong Kong identity is also more readily recognized by other countries and regions, so many classmates find applications for Japanese, European, and American visas especially easy using a Hong Kong identity card.

High-school textbooks tell us that we are a socialist country with Chinese characteristics, whereas after 1997 Hong Kong continued the capitalist system from the period of British colonial rule. In government elections, people from all sectors of society who meet legal qualifications—who comply with the Basic Law—can participate according to law. I often saw candidates posting “pick me”-style advertisements on the minibus to and from school. Hong Kong residents can also express views on government measures through various channels, provided they do not violate the Basic Law: “what the law does not prohibit may be done.” As a capitalist region, many Hong Kong matters operate through capital. Employees’ Mandatory Provident Fund, for example, is managed by qualified private MPF trustees, fundamentally unlike mainland state-owned enterprises and direct government management. Even the Hong Kong dollar is issued by three private banks authorized by the government and pegged to the U.S. dollar: banks remit U.S. dollars to the Hong Kong government, receive permission, and issue Hong Kong dollars at a fixed exchange rate. This is fundamentally different from the mainland’s unified issuance of RMB by the central bank.

Why Hong Kong is the Pearl of the Orient

Hong Kong is known as the “Pearl of the Orient” and is a financial center for exchange between the mainland and the outside world. Because of its previous British colonization, combined with intentional government promotion in recent years, Hong Kong has become a top-tier Asian financial center. Nearly all major global financial institutions establish their Asian headquarters there. Of course, in recent years some institutions have moved headquarters to Singapore for various reasons; Singapore is challenging Hong Kong and establishing a new financial order.

Every year, a continuous stream of foreign-exchange reserves is delivered to the mainland through Hong Kong, while much RMB is exchanged for U.S. dollars through Hong Kong’s financial center. Nearly all internationalized mainland companies—including familiar Internet companies—open Hong Kong branches, using its international settlement network and multi-currency financing channels to conduct business. Most transaction-settlement funds circulate through Hong Kong’s banking system. In recent years, many companies have sought to go overseas. One could even say that Hong Kong is necessarily the first stop for mainland companies going global—not to sell goods in Hong Kong, but to use the absence of foreign-exchange controls to allocate cross-border funds or convert them into Hong Kong dollars, U.S. dollars, and other currencies for international settlement and asset allocation.

Consequently, Hong Kong’s financial industry is extremely developed. Many large mainland companies establish finance, investment, and legal departments there. I once heard from a friend of a friend inside Tencent that he goes to Hong Kong every year to report investments to Pony; that also demonstrates Hong Kong’s financial position. But for the IT work I do, Hong Kong is much weaker: old technology stacks and low salaries characterize Hong Kong IT. Only bank technology departments or quantitative technology are a way forward in Hong Kong IT, and how much does getting into such firms actually have to do with technical skill?

Benefiting from Hong Kong’s position as a financial center, Shenzhen has developed increasingly fast because it faces Hong Kong across the sea. A quick look at the job market shows an enormous number of Shenzhen cross-border trade and cross-border payment companies. Because Hong Kong has no foreign-exchange controls and customs clearance with Shenzhen is convenient, many Shenzhen colleagues experienced in stock trading exchange a certain amount of RMB for Hong Kong dollars or U.S. dollars to further optimize asset allocation.

Working and living in Hong Kong

After visiting Hong Kong many times, one finds that its social welfare and facilities for an aging society do differ from the mainland’s.

For example, it provides Old Age Allowance and Old Age Living Allowance to elderly people. Taxes paid by workers are relatively low—progressive taxation, with a maximum of 17%—and beyond tax, only a 5% Mandatory Provident Fund contribution is needed. The MPF system is similar to the mainland pension system. What impressed me most is that Hong Kong’s infrastructure is very friendly to older people and people with disabilities. Buses have wheelchair boarding ramps; when a wheelchair user is waiting at a stop, the driver immediately gets out to open the dedicated ramp. Hong Kong’s tactile paving is also comprehensive. On my way to and from school I saw blind people walking with canes more than once. Consideration for aging is not merely infrastructure; it has entered ordinary people’s minds, and many would rather stand than occupy priority seats on the metro or bus.

What astonished me was Hong Kong people’s strong awareness of rules. Even when lifts are crowded, people queue on the right and leave the left passage for people in a hurry, except in extremely crowded cases. I remember once queuing for a toilet stall: people in Hong Kong began queuing at the entrance, ensuring that whoever arrived first used a stall first, rather than everyone standing at the doors of separate stalls. When everyone follows one set of rules, ordinary people enjoy basic services more fairly and society operates more efficiently.

But no place is perfect. Many people know average salaries in Hong Kong are very high; even restaurant waiters seen everywhere earn roughly HKD 15,000–25,000 per month. Yet consumption is extremely expensive. Leaving housing aside, even a simple three-dish meal at my school cafeteria costs around HKD 40–50. At a modest restaurant outside, ordering a few dishes can start at HKD 200 per person, unaffordable for ordinary people. At times, a taxi from school back to Shenzhen—a trip of about 50 km—costs HKD 400. That said, Hong Kong’s public transport is very developed, and basic travel can largely be completed by metro and bus.

Some mainland people may have experienced discrimination from Hong Kong people. Once, on a minibus home, I misheard Cantonese spoken by the driver and he said contemptuously, “This is Hong Kong, not the mainland.” I cannot say I was not angry in that moment, but I also knew it was only the driver’s impotent rage. Friends who know Hong Kong told me that with faster implementation of one country, two systems and a continuous inflow of high-end talent, many older blue-collar workers still have hostility toward mainland people. In their minds, the mainland remains the mainland of twenty years ago. Little do they realize that times change unpredictably and China is becoming stronger than ever.

Still, it must be admitted objectively that there are obvious gaps between the mainland and Hong Kong in some respects. I believe behind these gaps is the difference between 1.4 billion people and 7 million people: as population differs, the difficulty of management rises exponentially. Times are developing; the Party’s strong leadership and the superiority of the socialist system will both become engines for the Eastern dragon’s development. Our motherland will certainly become better!

Does university education in Hong Kong differ from the mainland?

Although I graduated from undergraduate study three years ago, returning to Hong Kong to study still lets me feel huge differences between the two education systems.

Mainland education emphasizes universal access more. The government’s first goal is enabling every child, no matter how poor, to afford university, and it also devotes considerable effort to making up for educational shortcomings for people with disabilities. But mainland China has too many students, and because it has developed so quickly, the teacher-student ratio is relatively low. Hong Kong performs a little better on this ratio and, as is well known, its education is more “elite-oriented,” allowing students more diverse development.

Below, from my own experience, I briefly compare educational systems at mainland Project 211 universities and Hong Kong’s top-three universities.

University information systems

During my whole undergraduate career, whether notices from the university or school, events, or course assignments, everything was communicated through QQ group chats—perhaps WeChat now. But because Hong Kong study and work are more Western-oriented, many matters are notified by email: post-holiday shuttle-bus arrangements, holiday periods, professors’ lectures, maintenance information, and every other detail. It is normal for students to receive dozens of relevant emails a day.

Whether group notices or email are better is a matter of opinion, but Hong Kong classrooms are much more digitalized than mainland ones. Teachers’ contacts, course information, and assigned work—including deadlines—are all available on websites or Canvas. Students upload completed electronic assignments directly through Canvas. This made a particularly deep impression on me. In undergraduate study, almost every assignment—calculation problems, coding, and so on—was written on paper and handed to the class study representative to submit. If one missed the representative’s collection time, one had to submit it directly to the teacher; students sometimes missed deadlines because they could not find the representative. As I recall, undergraduate grades and rankings were sent to the class monitor, who posted them directly as group announcements, causing students who performed poorly to publicly lose face. When studying for my master’s in Hong Kong, teachers put grades, rankings, and the class’s top and bottom quarter score lines only on each student’s own Canvas, protecting everyone’s privacy.

Besides notices and classes, Hong Kong university websites are especially well digitalized. Any information can be found on the intranet, including course results, employment information, tuition payments, and graduation information. Because I am not often in Hong Kong during term, what I find most convenient is being able to check my elective credits at any time and directly check my graduation progress through the website.

Teaching quality

Because my Hong Kong degree is an MSc, mainly taught courses, I also made a simple comparison of classroom quality in the mainland and Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong I took easy courses I had already studied, such as Computer Networks and Software Engineering, as well as comparatively cutting-edge courses such as Blockchain, LLM, and NLP. What impressed me most was how current the teachers’ ideas were. In all these computing-related courses, professors mentioned large models, and each course specifically spent one or two classes explaining the relationship between LLMs and the course, as well as current LLM development. Another discovery was that many knowledge points came with links to relevant papers for students to explore. I never had that experience as a mainland undergraduate. I never knew what a paper was in undergraduate classes; only after studying in Hong Kong did I discover how close research was to me. I once spoke with an associate professor from my undergraduate university, who candidly said he had not learned for a long time and, being older now, basically did not read papers in related fields. Hong Kong instructors are generally at the research frontier, so students can better grasp the idea of “papers.”

In addition, I found many part-time teachers while studying in Hong Kong. They do not hold university “establishment” positions and only undertake teaching duties. They generally have PhDs and other jobs in society. For example, my first-semester Blockchain teacher and second-semester FinTech teacher both worked outside the university and taught on weekends as part-timers. We did have corporate-practice courses as undergraduates, but because they carried no or very few credits and were extremely superficial, I think everyone understands the overall quality. I think this Hong Kong arrangement is an especially good innovation. Compared with the possible separation from practical reality among some mainland teachers who remain in ivory towers, learning from it could very likely ease the current disconnect between mainland schools and social needs.

Perhaps because the Hong Kong government and universities have money, learning facilities are exceptionally good: the library even has many free 4K monitors for students. Students can also reserve school study rooms online for group discussion. Thinking back to undergraduate group discussions, we either met in an open-air cafeteria or found an empty classroom, which is a little bittersweet.

Admission difficulty and career development

It is well known that because mainland China has so many students, the college entrance examination is particularly competitive. So many mainland parents send children to Hong Kong for high school so they can apply directly to Hong Kong universities for undergraduate education. This is indeed one option. But the money and effort involved are absolutely beyond what an ordinary family can bear. I do not know much about this area, so I will not discuss it in detail.

Perhaps because I am at HKUST, the entrepreneurial atmosphere is especially strong. Many students’ labels are “serial entrepreneur”; at such young ages, they have started businesses several times and even received angel rounds, which truly astonished me. At university I also learned about some Hong Kong PhD situations. People basically pursue PhDs with full scholarships, receiving roughly HKD 20,000 per month, which feels like a substantial income during doctoral study.

Many people are interested in MSc employment and PhD progression. Since this article is already lengthy, I will discuss these in detail in the next one.