Society Fees and a Membership Crisis: HKUSTSU's Deficit, Handover Gaps, and Temporary Premises

A room of roughly 200 square feet, holding a megaphone, old clothing, ballot boxes, and a union flag worn at the edges — this was not the storeroom of some newly formed small club, but reportedly the actual working space of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Students' Union (HKUSTSU) around 2023. Room renovations, the end of fee collection, membership decline, an annual deficit — several threads intertwine to form a financial and legitimacy crisis that has reportedly continued for years without clear resolution. This article draws on public figures and direct quotations reported by Sing Tao Daily, Ming Pao, and The Collective HK, arranged chronologically, presenting multiple accounts side by side without rendering a verdict.

# Background: the membership-fee question amid the 2021 "severance wave" at Hong Kong's eight universities

To understand the situation in which HKUSTSU's fee collection stopped, it helps to first note the broader political climate at Hong Kong's tertiary institutions around 2021. According to China News Service and multiple media reports, in the first half of 2021 CUHK, HKU, CityU, and PolyU each, in turn, "severed ties" with their respective students' unions: CUHK was reportedly first, in February 2021, citing possible legal risk in the incumbent cabinet's statements and use of campus space for political messaging, and it suspended fee collection on the union's behalf while asking the union to register independently as a society or company; HKU followed in April of the same year, reportedly citing the union's conduct as "increasingly politicised" and damaging to the university's reputation and overall interests; CityU and PolyU reportedly took similar steps thereafter. This wave of "severances," concentrated within a short span across multiple institutions, was reportedly unusual in the history of student self-governance at Hong Kong's universities.

HKUST is not named in the widely reported "severance" list — the four institutions explicitly named in public reporting are CUHK, HKU, CityU, and PolyU, and no mainstream media outlet appears to have grouped HKUST with that same batch. However, according to The Collective HK, HKUST's administration reportedly also stopped collecting fees on the union's behalf around "the year before last" (i.e., roughly the same window), though this step was reportedly not accompanied by a public statement or comparable media attention. This contrast is notable: while the same underlying step — ending fee collection — was framed at CUHK and HKU as a formal statement of severance from a "politicised" union, with an explicit political rationale given, HKUST's step was reportedly handled more quietly, with no official statement setting out the reasoning that has been found, mentioned only in passing when the union was interviewed. This difference between "quietly stopping" and "publicly severing" may, to some extent, reflect that HKUSTSU had a lower political profile than the CUHK and HKU unions around 2021 — a union less often in the public spotlight would, correspondingly, draw less outside attention when its relationship with the administration shifted.

# Membership: a decline from close to four thousand to just over a thousand

According to a 2023 report by The Collective HK, HKUSTSU's membership reportedly fell within three years from a peak of around 4,000 members^※ to around 1,000. Behind this decline lies a reported key institutional change: around 2021, the administration reportedly stopped collecting union fees on the union's behalf. Previously, union fees were long collected via tuition or registration processes, with nearly all undergraduates becoming members automatically; once the administration reportedly withdrew from this collection step, the union had to recruit members and persuade students to pay voluntarily, and the membership base reportedly fell accordingly.

According to a March 2024 Ming Pao report, the incumbent union launched an official website with an online payment function as a form of self-help, and membership figures rose back to around 1,200^※; the then internal vice-president was quoted as saying: "Many new students don't know the union exists — our legitimacy is not what it once was."

This shift from "collected-on-our-behalf" to "self-collected" reportedly meant, for the union, a fundamental restructuring of its entire approach to membership recruitment. Under an "automatic membership" model (in which all undergraduates became members by default), the union reportedly had little need to actively cultivate member relationships — fees were deducted automatically alongside tuition, and membership was a default outcome of enrolment rather than an active choice. Once collection on its behalf reportedly stopped, the union had to, like an ordinary civil society organisation, actively recruit and persuade students to pay and join through its website, social media, and orientation events — a fundamentally different operating model for an organisation previously accustomed to members simply arriving on their own, comparable in difficulty to a business shifting from a captive-supply model to competing for customers in an open market. The membership decline from close to 4,000 to just over a thousand may, to some extent, reflect the difficulty of this transition.

# An annual deficit of over HK$780,000

According to a Sing Tao Daily report, HKUSTSU reportedly recorded a deficit of over HK$780,000 in a given fiscal year. Fee income reportedly contracted in step with membership decline, cited as the most direct cause of this deficit; at the same time, the union reportedly still had to maintain day-to-day operating costs for outward-facing facilities such as its Print Shop and Co-op Shop, along with fixed expenditures such as affiliated-society subsidies and event budgets, widening the reported gap between income and expenditure.

Based on available public information, reporting has not disclosed the specific fiscal year in question, nor has the union reportedly published an itemised financial report explaining the deficit's causes; this article records the figure as reported by Sing Tao Daily as-is. Credibility note: single source (this figure currently appears only in one Sing Tao Daily report, with no independent financial documentation or a second media outlet's cross-verification found to date).

Based on the union's general income-expenditure structure, some plausible contributing factors can be inferred — the union's council reportedly has a Finance Committee (FC) responsible for approving the union's overall finances and affiliated-society subsidy applications; but what the Finance Committee can approve is only "how to allocate existing income," not the creation of new income. The union's main outward revenue channels are reportedly its Print Shop and Co-op Shop — the former offering photocopying and printing services, the latter selling stationery, snacks, and electronics to members at a discount; both are, in nature, "service" rather than "membership-fee" revenue, limited in scale and highly dependent on campus foot traffic and the membership base. As membership fell from several thousand to just over a thousand, not only did fee income directly shrink, but the Co-op Shop's potential customer base — being a members-only discount outlet — reportedly shrank correspondingly; with both fee income and revenue declining at once, while fixed items such as affiliated-society subsidies, event budgets, and facility maintenance were not necessarily reduced proportionally, a deficit reportedly followed as close to an inevitable outcome of this income-expenditure structure, rather than a one-off lapse in a single year.

# Relocation: from a formal "soc room" to a 200-square-foot temporary space

According to The Collective HK, the union's regular activity room (colloquially known among students as the "soc room") reportedly underwent renovation at one point, and the union was reportedly forced to work temporarily out of a roughly 200-square-foot space in a corner of campus, described as "cluttered and disorganised"; the article reportedly described the temporary room as containing a megaphone, clothing, ballot boxes, and a worn union flag, in contrast to the formal image of a "student self-governing body."

According to the report, the administration had reportedly originally planned to complete soc-room renovations "early next year," allowing the union to move back; but within the range of public information available for this article, no follow-up report confirming whether the move-back occurred as planned has been found.

For an organisation like a students' union, which depends on "visibility" to sustain its legitimacy, the physical space of its room carries symbolic weight comparable to its practical function. A formal, fixed, prominently located room is itself a concrete expression of the union's "presence" — students passing by can see a sign, drop in with questions any time, and see posters and notices on the walls; this everyday, informal exposure is precisely the most basic channel for recruiting new members and sustaining organisational visibility. When the room was temporarily relocated, due to renovation, to a small, cluttered space in a corner of campus, the union reportedly lost both "formal premises" and "prominent location" at once — compounding the difficulty of self-funded member recruitment into what could be described as a reinforcing cycle: fewer members → less income → harder to maintain a presentable operating space → lower visibility → harder still to recruit new members.

# Shrinking expressive space in parallel: the Democracy Wall and the Big-Character Poster Wall

Alongside the financial difficulties, the actual use of the union's traditional expressive spaces has reportedly declined. According to The Collective HK, after a rule requiring posters to be accompanied by the poster's name and student number took effect, the union's "Democracy Wall" was reportedly used by almost no one; the "big-character poster wall" was reportedly similarly disused. These two spaces, once traditional sites for students to post opinions and advocacy materials, reportedly faded from students' everyday use under the combined effect of the new rule and a changing political environment.

The union's then-president, in an interview, summed up this situation as "in the school's eyes, we have never really owned anything" — this statement reflects the union side's own subjective sense of its access to campus space; no public response from the administration to this characterisation has been found, and this article presents the quoted statement as-is, without rendering a verdict.

# A "succession plan": can three first-year recruits reverse the trend?

Facing difficulties in cabinet succession, according to The Collective HK, the incumbent union's executive committee reportedly added three first-year students to its team, as part of a specifically designed "succession plan" — intended to bring junior students into the union's operational core earlier, to avoid a gap arising when an entire cohort of officers graduates together with no successors in place. The article reportedly noted that of the union's ten officers, five were returning officers who had served before, including the president, who had reportedly gone through both the Umbrella Movement and the anti-extradition-bill movement.

This arrangement can, to some extent, be read as a proactive response to the "cabinet-succession gap" risk: rather than passively waiting for new students to spontaneously form a cabinet, the union reportedly opted to intervene early, using a mentoring approach to shorten new officers' learning curve. Based on available information, no follow-up report assessing the actual effectiveness of this succession plan has been found.

The combination of "five returning officers, three first-year recruits" also reportedly reflects a structural tension in the union's human resources: on one hand, having experienced returning officers continue to steer the organisation can help ensure operational continuity and avoid practical errors from a generational gap; on the other, over-reliance on returning officers also reportedly means that the process of a new generation independently taking over full cabinet responsibility is delayed — to some extent, this echoes the "veteran culture" dynamic described in this site's separate article on dormitory politics and seniority: continued involvement by senior members can help pass on experience, but if that involvement becomes a normalised dependence on veterans, it may further erode incoming students' confidence and initiative in forming their own cabinets, producing a dual effect in which continuity and dependence coexist.

# Reviving events: an attempt to rebuild visibility

According to reporting, the incumbent union reportedly plans to revive several traditional events, including a formal inauguration ceremony, an orientation camp, and a music festival, with the stated aim of raising the union's on-campus visibility and reconnecting with the student body. The then internal vice-president reportedly described the current situation as "surviving at the school through another means" — a statement that echoes a broader shift, described across the interview, from confrontation toward pragmatic engagement (for related political background, see Governance and Reform Notes^※; this article does not expand beyond its own scope here).

# Comparison with other institutions: is HKUST the "worst-off" case?

Placing HKUSTSU's financial difficulties within the broader picture across Hong Kong's eight universities, the picture presented by public information is relatively mixed. On one hand, according to the reporting cited above, CUHK, HKU, CityU, and PolyU reportedly underwent a more abrupt process in 2021, accompanied by formal official statements, of "severance" — the unions at these institutions faced not only a similar interruption to fee income but, in at least one case (CUHK's union), reportedly announced dissolution within less than a year afterward. By comparison, while HKUSTSU also reportedly bore the impact of sharply reduced fee income and membership loss, it has not, to date, reached the point of dissolution — which may suggest either relatively stronger organisational resilience in the face of the financial crisis, or relatively lower external pressure owing to its lower political visibility; these two explanations are not mutually exclusive.

On the other hand, in absolute terms, HKUSTSU's membership base of just over a thousand and annual deficit of over HK$780,000 are, compared with longer-established unions such as those at CUHK and HKU with traditionally larger, tens-of-thousands-strong membership bases, inherently smaller in scale — the smaller an organisation, the more limited the absolute impact of a proportionally similar membership decline, and correspondingly the greater the room it may have for operational adjustments such as cutting costs or relocating to a smaller temporary space. This article, based on available material, notes the limits of this comparative perspective as-is: to date, no authoritative body or academic study appears to have conducted a systematic, quantitative comparison of financial health across the students' unions of Hong Kong's eight universities, and the comparison above is based only on a patchwork of scattered news reports; readers should treat its inferential weight with appropriate caution.

# Multiple accounts, side by side: explanations for the financial crisis

Regarding the causes of the union's financial and membership crisis, public reporting presents several mutually non-exclusive explanatory angles:

• The union's own account: attributes the main causes to the administration ending fee collection on its behalf, the pandemic interrupting cabinet succession, the room relocation reducing visibility, and lower student willingness to participate amid a changed political environment;
• A broader observation within Hong Kong academic circles: according to multiple reports and commentary pieces, students' unions across several of Hong Kong's UGC-funded universities have reportedly faced similar membership decline and financial pressure in recent years, suggesting a general, cross-institutional structural pattern rather than a case unique to HKUST;
• The administration's perspective: based on public information available to date, no formal statement from HKUST's administration has been found setting out the specific basis, timing, or policy considerations behind ending fee collection on the union's behalf.

This article records the figures and quotations from available public reporting as-is, presenting the various accounts side by side, without endorsing an evaluative conclusion on behalf of any party.