Mainland Postgraduate and Research Talent: CUHK Doctoral Student Composition and the “Northward-Southward” Flow

⚠️ This article belongs to the Wild History module (16 Mainland Students and the Two Places). It juxtaposes multiple sources and perspectives. The Museum does not adjudicate or endorse any side. Data is based mainly on official statistics and peer-reviewed research; some institutional-level breakdowns lack public records, and the corresponding sections note the scope and limitations.

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In a nutshell: At The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) (Shatin campus), non-local students account for about 60% of research postgraduates (2021/22 academic year data), with mainland China as the core source. Across all eight UGC-funded institutions in the 2024/25 academic year, international students made up 87%^※ of research postgraduate enrolments, and among those international students, 92%^※ came from mainland China. The majority of mainland doctoral students plan to return north for employment after obtaining their academic credentials, and the two-way talent flow is becoming increasingly institutionalised under the Greater Bay Area policy framework.

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# How many of CUHK’s postgraduates are from mainland China?

The postgraduate population at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shatin campus) has been steadily expanding in recent years. According to data for the 2025/26 academic year from the CUHK Graduate School website^※, there are now over 17,900 postgraduate students enrolled across more than 230 programmes spanning eight faculties. Among all postgraduates, the proportion of non-local students is significantly higher than at the undergraduate level.

According to a Times Higher Education report^※, in the 2021/22 academic year, non-local students accounted for 60% of all postgraduates at CUHK (this figure covers both taught and research postgraduates; the same scope applies below). By comparison, non-local undergraduates made up only about 13% of the total. This disparity reflects two institutional differences: first, the government imposes a quota ceiling on non-local students in UGC-funded undergraduate programmes (recently raised from 20% to 40%), whereas taught postgraduate programmes are not subject to that cap; second, the university has greater flexibility to fill research postgraduate (MPhil/PhD) places, which are open to global recruitment.

At the territory-wide level, international students accounted for about 80% of research postgraduates (i.e., MPhil/PhD) across the eight UGC-funded institutions, and that share rose to 87%^※ in the 2024/25 academic year (scope: all eight UGC-funded institutions; data year: 2024/25). Over the past decade, this proportion has climbed by roughly seven percentage points.

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# How dominant is the mainland China presence among doctoral students?

Within the international cohort of research postgraduates (PhD and MPhil), the concentration of mainland Chinese students is particularly striking. According to Times Higher Education^※, mainland Chinese students accounted for 92% of international research postgraduates at Hong Kong’s UGC-funded institutions in the 2024/25 academic year (scope: mainland share of international research postgraduates, 2024/25), up from 86% a decade earlier. In other words, the PhD/MPhil level has almost become a single-source pipeline from mainland China.

For CUHK’s main campus, the university does not release admission breakdowns by source region, but its 2019 data (source: CUHK Strategic Plan 2021–2025^※) shows that of the total 13,183 postgraduates, 6,065 (46%) were non-local, and “the majority come from mainland China”, consistent with the territory-wide trend. Combining that figure with the 60% non-local postgraduate share in 2021/22, it can be inferred that both the absolute number and the proportion of mainland Chinese students have risen since 2019 (scope includes taught and research postgraduates; not a standalone figure published by CUHK).

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# What are the main drivers attracting mainland doctoral students?

To understand why mainland postgraduates choose CUHK (and other Hong Kong institutions), one must distinguish between “institutional pull factors” and “personal strategic considerations”.

On the institutional pull side, Hong Kong’s academic environment offers several distinctive resources that are less available within the mainland’s higher-education system: a tradition of academic freedom under the common law framework, direct access to international peer-review networks, a predominantly English-medium publishing and communication culture, and an information environment unconstrained by mainland internet restrictions. A more immediate incentive is the scholarship system: the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS)^※, established by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) in 2009, awards around 400 places annually (from the 2026/27 intake) across all eight UGC-funded institutions. Each awardee receives an annual stipend of HK$344,400 (approximately RMB 310,000) plus a travel and research allowance of HK$14,400, for a funding period of up to three years, giving a total value exceeding HK$1.81 million (about US$230,000). The scheme is open to applicants worldwide “irrespective of their country of origin, prior work experience, and ethnic background”, and in practice it attracts large numbers of applicants each year from China’s elite-university schemes such as Project 985 and Project 211.

On the personal strategic consideration side, a qualitative study published in 2023 based on interviews with 37 mainland doctoral students at publicly funded Hong Kong institutions (spanning multiple universities and covering both STEM and humanities disciplines) identified the academic publishing environment, the resources offered by supervisors, and research conditions as the three top motivating factors. Furthermore, over 60% of the interviewees were aged 23–27, at an early stage of academic career planning, and viewed Hong Kong as a transitional academic platform between the “international” and the “mainland” spheres.

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# Where do doctoral graduates go — northward or to stay in Hong Kong?

According to that same qualitative study^※, the majority of interviewed mainland doctoral students plan to return to mainland China for employment after graduation. Reasons cited include the limited number of local academic posts in Hong Kong, fierce competition, and the large-scale recruitment drives at mainland Chinese universities in recent years, which offer broader job opportunities for doctoral graduates. Some interviewees also mentioned that geographic ties to family and social networks were an important factor in ultimately returning to the mainland.

This directional pattern — with mainland China as both the source of students and their primary employment destination — creates an “arc-shaped flow” around Hong Kong’s research postgraduate programmes: mainland students come “south” to earn an internationally recognised qualification, then bring that academic capital back “north”. The model aligns structurally with Hong Kong’s functional role as a “research transit hub”.

That said, some doctoral graduates do stay in Hong Kong as research assistants (RAs) or postdoctoral fellows, forming a short-term resident layer. Some CUHK departments also actively recruit outstanding mainland doctoral graduates as researchers, especially in science, engineering, and life-sciences fields, to support the daily operations of CUHK’s four State Key Laboratories (see next section).

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# How do CUHK’s State Key Laboratories connect research talent across the two places?

The Chinese University of Hong Kong currently hosts four State Key Laboratories, all approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China:

Of these, the State Key Laboratory of Quantum Information Technologies and Materials was officially awarded its plaque on 25 August 2025^※, with Professor Liu Renbao (劉仁保) serving as director. The laboratory focuses on quantum sensing, nanophotonics, quantum materials, and quantum information theory. At the plaque-unveiling ceremony, CUHK Vice-Chancellor and President Dennis Lo stressed that the University is “leveraging its unique advantages to integrate into national development through collaboration and talent exchange between Hong Kong, Macau, and the mainland”.

Institutionally, these four laboratories are simultaneously embedded in Hong Kong’s academic system and the evaluation framework of the mainland’s Ministry of Science and Technology, making them an important institutional channel for absorbing mainland research personnel (including postdoctoral fellows and visiting researchers). Mainland students enrolled in laboratory research projects, or visiting mainland researchers, likewise form de facto nodes in the “two-way research talent flow” between the two places.

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# How has CUHK (Shenzhen) expanded the postdoctoral institutional pathway?

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen), an independently operated joint-venture university on the mainland, has achieved a landmark breakthrough in its postdoctoral system in recent years. In November 2023, it was approved to set up three postdoctoral research stations, covering computer science and technology, materials science and engineering, and applied economics. The official plaque-unveiling ceremony was held on 22 January 2024^※. This was the first time that the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security had extended postdoctoral station application eligibility to a Chinese-foreign cooperatively run university, making CUHK-Shenzhen the first such institution to be approved — a significant institutional precedent.

Prior to this, CUHK-Shenzhen had since 2017 been jointly recruiting postdoctoral fellows with mainland institutions such as the University of Science and Technology of China and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, training a cumulative total of over 300 postdoctoral researchers (as of 2023, through the joint-training mechanism). The independent approval of these research stations marks a further clarification of CUHK-Shenzhen’s standing within the mainland higher-education system, and provides a firmer institutional foundation for the triangular talent flow between CUHK (Shatin), CUHK-Shenzhen, and mainland universities.

CUHK’s Shenzhen Research Institute (SZRI), based in the Shenzhen Virtual University Park in Nanshan District since 2007, focuses on technology transfer, industry collaboration, and the cultivation of high-end professional talent for the local area. According to the institute’s profile, it is positioned as “an important base for CUHK’s development in the mainland, driving the University’s innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives while serving as a bridge connecting Hong Kong and Shenzhen”.

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# Policy environment: the tension between expanding non-local intake and mainland concentration

The Hong Kong SAR Government’s 2023 Policy Address announced that the cap on non-local students in UGC-funded undergraduate programmes would be raised from 20% to 40% (effective from the 2024/25 academic year) and is planned to rise further to 50% (by 2026/27). Taught postgraduate programmes, which are not subject to the cap, can recruit freely.

However, the expansion policy has triggered some nuanced reactions at the institutional level. According to THE reporting^※, an anonymous head of department at a certain CUHK department said bluntly that the university needs to “try harder to recruit international students, especially from Belt and Road countries”, rather than continuing to rely on mainland sources, otherwise “internationalisation” could, in substance, become little more than a single-source expansion.

This statement illustrates a subtle divergence between policy-level ambitions and institutional-level realities: the SAR Government is positioning Hong Kong as an “international education hub”, yet in actual postgraduate (especially doctoral) recruitment, the heavy concentration of mainland Chinese students is already a structural reality — whether measured by enrolment volume, scholarship applicant profiles, or research collaboration patterns, all point in the same direction.

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# “Northward-Southward”: institutionalised flow or structural dependency?

Synthesising the preceding sections, the two-way talent flow at the postgraduate level involving CUHK can be summarised as follows:

Within the overarching Greater Bay Area strategy, this flow pattern is regarded as a positive example of “free movement of talent”. Yet some scholars have pointed out that if the concentration of mainland students continues to rise, the goal of “genuine internationalisation” of Hong Kong’s postgraduate cohorts — i.e., attracting a diverse body of students from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the Americas — will face a structural obstacle.

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