ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY
HONG KONG BRANCH
PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1993/94
This is my third report to members since I took up the Presidency in March, 1991, and I have found that one of the difficulties of presenting a report at an annual general meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society is that it is sometime before it is in the hands of the members, since it is customary for it to be printed in the Society's journal; and due to the inevitable time lag between the date of the annual general meeting and the publication of the journal many of the events and problems of the Society may therefore be a somewhat distant memory, when read by all members up to two years later. I think therefore that in future it would be appropriate to distribute the report to all members (as you realise only about 60, or about one-tenth, of our members actually attend an annual general meeting) and subject to approval by the incoming Council I would propose that this report together with the financial report and any points arising out of this annual general meeting be circulated to members within the next three months.
I propose this because it is apparent that the Royal Asiatic Society's profile within the community has increased over the last year or so in various ways and I think you will agree with me that in these accelerated changing times it is important that all members should not need to rely on reports which may appear in the newspapers. In the last year for instance the Society has been asked to appear twice before the LegCo Panel on Information Policy, once to discuss the relocation of the Public Records Office and once to exchange views on management of Government information and documents in the light of the proposed data protection law and there are other policy matters, not so controversial, which all members should be aware of, matters which are not able to be elaborated upon in the newsletter.
I think also it will improve the Society's communication not only within the membership but also will assist in obtaining new members. Inevitably in Hong Kong the turnover in members is large and for newcomers to our Society it does take time to establish what exactly we do.
So what have we done in the last year? Besides the annual general meeting and dinner, we have had no less than 13 lectures and 14 local visits, and one trip to Guangzhou, and looking back through our records I cannot find a year when so much activity has taken place.
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