High rents, job fears rank among top stressors for mainland students in Hong Kong

A combination of sky-high rents, career anxiety and social isolation is placing a mental and financial strain on mainland Chinese students living in Hong Kong, even as more than 40 per cent of them plan to remain in the city, a survey has revealed.

The study released by the Youth Expats Association on Sunday also found that developing a sense of belonging outweighed lucrative salaries as a factor in determining whether these students choose to stay in the city after graduation.

According to the survey, which polled 380 mainland students – 80 per cent of whom were undergraduates – between last September and this month, nearly 44 per cent of respondents expressed a firm or leaning intention to stay in Hong Kong in the long term.

The remaining 56.1 per cent were either actively planning to leave, intending to return to the mainland or hedging their bets by comparing Hong Kong against overseas markets.

When asked about the sources of stress in their daily lives, respondents overwhelmingly pointed to the city’s notoriously high cost of living and academic pressures.

Rent and accommodation costs topped the list of grievances, cited by 19.2 per cent as their biggest burden. This was closely followed by uncertainty over future career development at 17.6 per cent, daily living expenses at 17.1 per cent and academic pressure at 16.6 per cent.

Meanwhile, language and cultural adaptation accounted for 15.3 per cent of the stress, while a lack of a social circle and a sense of belonging troubled 14.2 per cent of those surveyed.