Valuable Christmas gift to residents
With Christmas just around the corner, the gift-giving season is under way. Measures announced by the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council on Monday, which will encourage and facilitate Hong Kong people — particularly young people — to study, work or live on the mainland are undoubtedly this year’s most valuable Christmas gift for many.
This is true for those who are already studying, working or living on the mainland and those who plan to do so. The measures being implemented by various departments of the central government include letting Hong Kong residents working on the mainland join a national homeownership fund which makes contributing members’ homeownership dreams easier to achieve, creating scholarships specifically for students from Hong Kong and Macao and allowing Hong Kong researchers working on mainland institutes to apply for subsidies for their qualified research projects from the National Social Science Fund.
These are substantive measures that will benefit hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents. The phenomenal growth of the mainland economy over the past three decades and favorable recent social development on the mainland has attracted an ever-rising number of Hong Kong residents to cross over the boundary and stay on the mainland to study, work or live. According to latest figures, about 420,000 Hong Kong residents now work on the mainland; and more than 15,000 Hong Kong students are currently enrolled in various educational institutions on the mainland with the number continuing to rise at an annual rate of 3,000.
The latest favorable measures and those announced by the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office in August, as well as those revealed by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor last Friday and expected to be announced by relevant mainland authorities soon — including allowing Hong Kong students graduating from mainland universities to find jobs on the mainland with a certificate from the Ministry of Education, and allowing more Hong Kong children to study in public schools on the mainland — are part of the central government’s continued effort to help residents from Hong Kong to study, work or live on the mainland.
Hong Kong residents can be assured that many more such favorable measures are on the way as relevant mainland authorities take increasing heed of the central government’s policy to support Hong Kong residents. President Xi Jinping promised this during his inspection visit to Hong Kong in July when the city celebrated the 20th anniversary of its return to the motherland and in his report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China held in October.
It is reasonable to expect that more and more Hong Kong residents will benefit from these measures as well as those in the pipeline, as economic and social integration between the special administrative region and the mainland deepens further.