Chinese students fleeing Hong Kong protests forego accommodation deposits
- Students from mainland make up bulk of non-local contingent at city’s universities
- Three mainland Chinese students forgo HK$88,000 in rent paid in advance, deposits
Mainland Chinese university students fleeing Hong Kong amid the ongoing anti-government protests are forfeiting huge deposits in the process.
Students from the mainland make up the bulk of the universities’ non-local contingent. In the 2016-17 academic year, 12,037 mainland students were enrolled at eight universities in Hong Kong, twice the number a decade ago, according to the Hong Kong government’s Audit Department.
And as semesters end early across the city, these students, worried about their safety, are cancelling their leases, sometimes at great cost.
This month, according to local Hong Kong media, three mainland Chinese students cancelled the lease for a flat in Tai Wai after living there for about four months, forgoing HK$88,000 (US$11,242) in two months’ rent paid in advance and other deposits.
Students from north of the border are often required by landlords to pay big deposits as well as a year’s rent in advance, as they cannot furnish proof of employment and income. And once a lease is broken, the landlord has the right to keep such deposits.
A mainland Chinese finance professional who only gave her surname as He, has lived in Hong Kong for five years and has been forced to look for a new flatmate after her old cotenant, a student at City University of Hong Kong, decided to leave the city in a hurry.