Mainland Students at HKU — Community, Tensions, and Cross-Border Perspectives

Wild-history section, Module 16. This article touches on politically sensitive cross-border tensions. The account juxtaposes multiple sources, takes no side, and reaches no verdict. Individuals in contested passages are referred to as "Mr./Ms. [Surname]." Content related to Hong Kong independence or violence is handled under §6.2 and listed as links only. Current officeholders are referred to by title, not by name.

In a hall corridor, Cantonese, Putonghua and English alternate; every few years a slogan on the Democracy Wall becomes a focal point of cross-border discourse; at graduation ceremonies, the share of mainland students has risen year after year, moving from the margins to a majority — a discernible, if quiet, trajectory across more than a decade on the HKU campus. This article follows four threads — enrolment data, community organisations, the language landscape, and occasional incidents — to lay out, side by side, the situations of mainland students at HKU and the cross-border perspectives on them, without adjudicating between them.

# I. The scale of the mainland-student population: data background

According to HKU's official Quick Stats^※, the proportion of non-local students at HKU (mainland and international combined) has continued to rise, reaching approximately 55.3% in 2025/26, up from 36.1% in 2020/21. The large majority of non-local students are from mainland China (mainly at the postgraduate and taught-postgraduate levels). This expansion was not a single-year jump but a decade-scale structural shift: at the undergraduate level, non-local enrolment is bounded by a UGC-set quota (recently eased from 20% to 40%, and further raised to 50% from 2024), whereas postgraduate programmes — taught master's programmes in particular — have not historically been subject to the same cap, and have been the fastest-growing channel for mainland-student numbers.

Against this backdrop, mainland students have become a significant part of the HKU student body, prompting a range of discussions on language, culture and politics. According to HKU's official annual-report data series, the share of "non-local" undergraduate entrants from the mainland has risen year on year since 2012, broadly coinciding with shifts in local-applicant competition following the "3-3-4" curriculum reform (see the relevant section in Module 02). Detailed figures and year-on-year trends at the postgraduate level are covered in a separate article in this module, "The 'Mainlandisation' of the Graduate School."

# II. Mainland-student community organisations: from informal mutual aid to formal institution

The mainland-student community at HKU is not monolithic; it is made up of organisations at several levels. According to HKU Alumni Affairs Office material^※, the "Chinese Mainland Students and Scholars Alumni Association (HKU)" (CSSAAHKU) grew out of the "Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA-HKU)," which was founded by mainland students on 27 April 2012, initially functioning mainly as mutual aid, orientation, and social networking. In August 2014, with support from HKU's Development and Alumni Affairs Office (DAAO), CSSAAHKU was formally recognised as an official alumni organisation, marking the community's transition from a loose, self-organised mutual-aid network into a standing body with formal institutional backing.

CSSA-HKU and its undergraduate division (CSSAUD) continue today, handling orientation reception, festival events (such as Lunar New Year gatherings), academic mutual aid, and peer mentoring — one of the first community networks new mainland students encounter after enrolment. Running in parallel to local-student-led halls and student-union-affiliated societies, the mainland-student community tends to operate through hometown associations, field-specific WeChat groups, and CSSA-organised activities, forming a comparatively separate secondary network that coexists with the mainstream campus organisational ecosystem. This "parallel community" structure is itself, at the organisational level, an expression of the "natural separation between the two student communities" phenomenon discussed in academic research below.

# III. "Anti-mainlandisation" discourse and the situation of mainland students

# The academic-research perspective

According to a 2015 study by scholar Cora Lingling Xu, published in Asian Studies Review^※, the research found that:

• Mainland students are inevitably drawn into tensions between Hong Kong and the mainland;
• "Anti-mainlandisation" discourse is "an unavoidable part" of mainland students' experience in Hong Kong;
• Mainland students' main concerns centre on competition for educational resources (government-subsidised places) and post-graduation employment opportunities.

According to the study: "Local Hong Kong people are concerned about whether the government's continued subsidy of non-local students' university education is fair to local people, only 18% of whose local secondary-school graduates receive subsidised places." (Presented as one of several statements of position, without endorsement.)

The study also notes that "anti-mainlandisation" discourse is not unique to HKU but part of the broader evolution of identity politics in Hong Kong society since the handover, with the university campus being one microcosm of a wider social tension; mainland students' day-to-day experience on campus is often described as sitting between "harmonious relations at the individual level" and "abstract antagonism at the group level," the two coexisting without necessarily contradicting each other.

# Mainland students' own accounts

According to a 2023 qualitative study published in Frontiers in Psychology (sample: mainland PhD students at HKU and other Hong Kong universities)^※, mainland students generally reported the following adaptation challenges:

• Language barrier: the gap between Cantonese-dominant daily life and a Putonghua/English academic environment
• Cultural adjustment: adapting to Hong Kong's pace of life and dietary habits
• Social integration: a natural separation between local-student and mainland-student communities

The same study also notes that some mainland-student interviewees reported eventually building stable academic and interpersonal networks in Hong Kong. The research found that physical proximity (the same research group, the same hall floor) was the primary driver of network formation, with most cross-community friendships forming through everyday contact outside formal settings rather than through it. Accounts from multiple sides are presented side by side.

According to interview records from the same study, some mainland students reported clear uncertainty, on first arriving at HKU, about whether "local people welcomed them" — an uncertainty that was strongest in the first months, when language barriers and differences in cultural habits (such as queuing etiquette and volume in public spaces) were most pronounced, and which eased gradually with time spent in Hong Kong; but the language-level gap — Cantonese in particular — for most mainland students, remained not fully closed even by the time of graduation.

# IV. Language tension: Cantonese and Putonghua

According to the study cited above^※, some local interviewees felt that the large influx of mainland students was driving "linguistic mainlandisation," threatening Cantonese's dominant position in day-to-day campus life; mainland-student interviewees more often responded along the lines of "trying to learn Cantonese, but with limited resources."

HKU's official language policy designates English as the primary medium of instruction, but Cantonese and Putonghua are both used in everyday social settings, forming a complex language landscape: curricula, official documents and international-exchange settings are predominantly in English; daily communication among local students is predominantly in Cantonese; and Putonghua sees the highest usage within the mainland-student community itself. According to a 2023 cross-group communication study (Tandfonline)^※, there is a significant relationship among mainland students between perceived Cantonese proficiency, usage anxiety, and willingness to initiate communication — greater Cantonese confidence correlates with a greater willingness to initiate conversation with local people in Cantonese, forming a self-reinforcing cycle; conversely, those with weaker Cantonese proficiency tend to retreat into Putonghua- or English-speaking circles, which in practice deepens the day-to-day separation between the two language communities.

HKU's Chinese-language education unit offers dedicated Cantonese courses for international and non-local students (see the unit's website for details), open to mainland and other non-local students as electives — a relatively concrete institutional response on the language-integration front from the university side; but according to student accounts, the proportion of mainland students taking Cantonese electives is limited, with most learners aiming to "follow everyday conversation" rather than to achieve fluency.

This language tension is not unique to HKU but a phenomenon common across Hong Kong's universities — the 2018 "Putonghua exam controversy" at Hong Kong Baptist University (see below) was the same structural tension erupting in a more intense form at another institution, with ripple effects briefly reaching the HKU campus as well.

# V. Shifts after 2019–2021

According to a 2022 Foreign Policy report^※, following the 2019 social movement events and the implementation of the National Security Law, the political atmosphere on the HKU campus changed; some local scholars and students left Hong Kong, while the proportion of mainland students continued to rise over the same period. The report cites an anonymous scholar's account that dialogue between the two student communities on sensitive topics declined.

This passage relies primarily on an anonymous source and is assessed as "single-source" credibility; it is included as background only.

Worth noting alongside this: as the relative share of local students and local scholars contracted and the share of non-local students (predominantly mainland) continued to rise, the "majority–minority" structure of the HKU campus itself reversed over roughly five to six years — a structural shift that, in itself, has reshaped the context of cross-border student interaction: mainland students are no longer a "minority" on campus, and in some departments and hall floors have become a de facto majority. The long-term effect of this shift on cross-border student relations remains, in the academic literature, unresolved; this article does not attempt to pre-judge it.

# VI. Cross-border tension on the Democracy Wall: a 2018 slogan incident

Democracy Walls at Hong Kong's universities have historically been among the most visible public arenas for cross-border political and linguistic tension. HKU's own Democracy Wall has, on multiple occasions, seen "I support Hong Kong independence"-type slogans, as well as counter-slogans from pro-establishment quarters, forming a multi-sided back-and-forth — such content is handled under §6.2 and is not narrated in this article; it is noted here for background only.

One incident directly related to "cross-border issues," not part of the independence/violence narrative, and publicly verifiable, took place in January 2018: according to a 2018 Haiwainet report^※ and a same-day TOPick report^※, two Hong Kong Baptist University students, dissatisfied with the university's Putonghua graduation-exam arrangements, occupied the Language Centre for roughly eight hours, demanding that the university either withdraw the requirement or appoint external examiners. HKBU subsequently announced disciplinary suspensions against the two students involved in the occupation. That night, slogans appeared on HKU's Democracy Wall expressing support for the HKBU students and criticising HKBU's disciplinary decision, including sharply worded criticism directed at HKBU's then-president (who had previously served as HKU's Pro-Vice-Chancellor). According to the reports, profanity in the slogans was torn down within hours of posting, while the slogans themselves remained up for a period afterward.

What is distinctive about this incident is that its central dispute was not "independence" discourse but rather a conflict between Putonghua-teaching requirements and local students' interests — the HKBU students objected to the mandatory nature of the Putonghua exam requirement, not to Putonghua itself; the supportive slogans on HKU's Democracy Wall were, in a sense, a cross-institution echo between students at the two universities on the question of where language-policy boundaries should lie. This incident is presented according to its sourced attribution; multiple news reports corroborate the timing, location, and basic sequence of events, giving it "multi-source corroborated" credibility. As for how many HKU students the supportive slogans actually reflected — versus the personal action of a small number of posters — the public reporting offers no quantified account, and readers may judge for themselves.

# VII. The Democracy Wall and cross-border issues (link directory)

⚠ Content on the Democracy Wall and cross-border issues that involves Hong Kong-independence or violence-related events is handled per §6.2 — not narrated here, links only, see Module 18.