Thirty-four students, who had been selected for "a great horizon", a programme designed to give them exposure to mainland, set off yesterday.

The youngsters in the programme will join four enterprises on the mainland for one-month summer internship to gain experience in business culture and to understand the economic environment there.

The programme was organized by Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) with Young DAB as the internship planner.

Cheung Kwok-kwan, chairman of Young DAB presiding at the opening ceremony, wished all the students good luck and expressed hope that this would broaden their horizon of knowledge .

He also told the students to work hard and gain as much experience as possible. The students' team will be divided into four groups according to their assigned enterprise, which will be in Zhongshan, Dongguan, Heyuan and Huizhou respectively.

DAB said that there had been over 150 applicants from 11 local tertiary institutions and they were mostly from business stream like, business administration and economics. About one-fourth of the applicants were studying social science like politics and sociology.

The applicants had been selected on the basis of interview performance, business sense and proficiency in Putonghua. The interns will return to Hong Kong in mid-August after their one-month programme and a "graduation" ceremony.

Moreover, they might also be offered subsidies to run a sales booth during the Lunar New Year to show how well they had learnt through "a greater horizon".

(China Daily July 4, 2006)