Nearly 1,000 students from Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions had applied for more than 200 job positions in Nansha district of Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, on Thursday. A group of 176 students from the special administrative regions started internship for six weeks. The youth from Hong Kong and Macao favor the program, said Shan Wen, deputy secretary of the Nansha committee of the Communist Youth League of China, at the launch of the program on Thursday.

Lei Ka Pui, a young man from Hong Kong, applied for the program as soon as he learned that a permanent site for the International Financial Forum had been settled in Nansha. "I have been paying great attention to the development of the financial industry since I was in college," said Lei, who is majoring in finance at the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law.

Recalling his first day as an intern for an education consulting company in Nansha, Cheng Man Hei from Macao said the program had helped add strong momentum to youth entrepreneurship and employment in Nansha.

"There are abundant opportunities for us young students from Hong Kong and Macao to work in the mainland, following a comprehensive one-stop service platform for youth entrepreneurship and employment," he said.

Cheng and other students from several domestic and overseas universities have already started their internship at enterprises and government-funded institutions in Nansha, after arriving in the district on July 17.

The internship program would help inject momentum into an overall plan to promote comprehensive cooperation among Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao by further deepening the opening-up of Nansha, according to Ruan Xiaohong, director of the local united front work authority.

The plan, which was issued in June by the State Council, China's Cabinet, stressed the importance of creating a youth entrepreneurship and employment cooperation platform in Nansha.