Mainland Student Exchange Focus 'too Narrow'

Pro-democracy lawmakers criticised the government on Friday for placing too much emphasis on student exchanges with mainland schools.

The Financial Secretary, Paul Chan, on Wednesday proposed allocating HK$150,000 to local schools which have 'sister' schools in the mainland, to fund exchanges between their students.

Education Undersecretary Christine Choi told lawmakers that the relatively low cost is partly why mainland schools are given priority in exchange programmes.

But education sector lawmaker Ip Kin-yuen said this could undercut the reason why students go abroad in the first place.

"After all, Hong Kong should be an international city", he said. "We should put equal emphasis on exchanges with mainland students and with students in other places... but if most of our resources are contributed to exchanges with [the] mainland only, the result would be making the exposure of our students too narrow."