tended to speak no Chinese, with Indonesian languages as their mother tongues and Dutch as their academic language. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hong Kong also became a significant source of Chinese migrants to the Netherlands, with about 600 to 800 per year, falling off to around 300 to 400 per year by the late 1980s. Also in the 1980s, the Netherlands began to become a popular choice for students from mainland China. Factors which influenced this popularity included the tuition fees, which were relatively lower than those in the United Kingdom, and the ease of obtaining a student visa as compared to the United States. In the beginning, these were PRC government-financed students, consisting of top students selected by examination, and gained admission at prestigious Dutch universities such as Leiden University. However, in the 1990s, more privately financed students, students on Dutch scholarships, and short-term exchange students began to arrive. By 2002, embassy figures showed roughly 4,000 PRC students in the Netherlands. Demographic characteristics , figures from the Netherlands' Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek showed: Persons born outside of the Netherlands: 41,533 mainland China-born persons (19,466 men, 22,067 women) 9,757 Hong Kong-born persons (4,808 men, 4,949 women) 83 Macau-born persons (31 men, 52 women) 2,254 Taiwan-born persons (830 men, 1,424 women) Persons born in the Netherlands: 17,564 persons with at least one parent born in China (9,002 men, 8,562 women) 8,440 persons with at least one parent born in Hong Kong (4,300 men, 4,140 women) 36 persons with at least one parent born in Macau (18 men, 18 women) 531 persons with at least one parent born in Taiwan (273 men, 258 women) Totalling 80,198 persons. This represents growth of 92.8% compared to the population in 1996, the earliest year for which statistics are available. However, the various groups within the population show sharply differing growth trends. The number of persons of mainland Chinese background grew by 152% over that same period, with both overseas-born and Dutch-born segments showing a similar level of growth. In contrast, the number of persons of Hong Kong background has shown only mild growth, entirely due to natural increase rather than additional migration; in fact the stock of Hong Kong migrants fell by 5.6% during the same period. There is also migration of Surinamese Hakkas to the Netherlands who constitute about 10% of the Chinese population. The Chinese in the Netherlands are