(1390), Wt. 20024-26, 6000, 11/08, A, & E, W,
"
(8327). 1081-7, 6000. 4/09.
"
Times
3.7.09.
BRITISH AND GERMAN METHODS. AN OBJECT-LESSON.
(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.)
TOKIO, MAY 21.
periods of special stress. Other illustrations could be given, such as the organization of Chinese dispensaries throughout the colony by the initiative of the Chinese themselves, and the Fa Leung organization, also entirely Chinese, for the rescue, maintenance, and repatriation of Chinese "Why does not your Government support women and children emigrants from all parts of China on their way through Hong-kong, in the same way as the German Government is supporting a similar scheme at Kiao-chau?"
abuses of the emigration trade. Thus, whilst the Chinese students at Hong-kong would have been probing questions put to me by a Chinese fellow-passenger in the steamer from Hong-kong to Japan. He was a Cantonese gentleman who had received the rudiments of Western education in Hong-kong, and, having apparently done well for himself in the world, was very anxious to give his sons still larger educational advantages. Knowing his own country thoroughly, he was also quite aware that if Chinese boys are to derive the full benefits of Western education from the point of view of moral training as well as of book-learning, they must be removed from the atmosphere of Chinese cities. He was therefore deeply interested in the scheme which is now afoot for creating a University in Hong-kong where Chinese youths would not only receive the scientific training of which the Chinese stand so greatly in need if they are to develop the material resources of their country, but would also be subjected to the moral discipline of collegiate life under proper supervision and control.
KIAO-CHAU HIGH SCHOOL,
As an illustration of the grafting of Western methods of organization and Western conceptions of civic usefulness on to a Chinese stock can achieve, the Chinese city affords valuable object-lessons in the practical application of theoretical science.
From the British point of view, the scheme is equally commendable, for it is surely of the utmost importance that, at a time when undoubtedly the leaven of new ideas is fermenting all over China, the rising generation from which so much is expected should be brought into close contact with the best aspects of British life. British influence may no longer be paramount in the Far East, but the supremacy of the English tongue is as yet untouched, and just as the variety of provincial dialects in China has led to the adoption of "pidgin" English as the lingua franca, not only of foreigners, but of the Chinese commercial classes outside their own districts, literary English must serve as the one common medium of Western learning until China has evolved a literature of her own on the lines of Western thought. But, unless we bestir ourselves, this advantage will be lost to us in the same way as so many other advantages have been lost to us in the field both of diplomacy and of commercial enterprise.
The Germans, though the last comers, have set to with their usual systematic thoroughness. The latest official report of the German authorities at Kiao-chau contains instructive details concerning the high school which is about to be created there for Chinese students. Though in name only a high school, its scope is even larger than that of the proposed University of Hong-kong, for in addition to a medical and a technical branch, there is to be an agricultural branch including forestry, and a political science branch, comprising international law, State and administrative law, mining and maritime law, political economy and finance.
THE HONG-KONG UNIVERSITY.
Medicine and engineering are the two branches of Western science for which at present there is the largest demand and the greatest scope in China, and to these the proposed University at Hong-kong will, in the first place, address itself, for the scheme has grown up out of certain proposals for extending and developing the College of Medicine and the Technical Institute which have already done yeoman's work in the colony. An outline of the scheme appeared a month or two ago in The Times.
A public-spirited citizen of Hong-kong has offered the considerable sum (about £27,000) required for the erection of suitable buildings on condition that adequate funds, estimated at about £100,000, shall be provided for purposes of equipment and endowment. A small portion of this amount will be derived from the absorption of the College of Medicine and the Technical Institute, and the rest, it is hoped, will be raised by private subscription. The Chinese community in Hong-kong is responding generously to the appeal which has been issued by the Governor, Sir Frederick Lugard, who has devoted himself heart and soul to the scheme, and, what is more, it has elicited substantial support not only from the Chinese communities in other colonies, such as Penang, Singapore, and, under the French flag, Saigon, but from the neighbouring Chinese city of Canton, where the Governor-General has promised to give very effective expression to his thorough sympathy and approval.
One very attractive feature of the scheme is that subscribers of £1,000 to the endowment fund shall be entitled to present one scholar, who, provided he passes the entrance examination, shall be received without payment of fees, and the provincial towns and cities of Southern China, at least, will, it is expected, prove keen to avail themselves of this privilege.
The technical branch, to which special importance is evidently attached, is to include mining, electrical and railway engineering, together with architecture and shipbuilding.
In connexion with the high school there will be a preparatory school of six classes on the lines of a German Realschule without Latin, for which pupils will be received from Chinese Government schools, as well as from other German schools already existing in China.
The German Government does not rely for such purposes on private initiative. On the basis of 250 scholars, the capital cost of the establishment is estimated at £32,000, and the annual expenditure at £10,000. The German Government undertakes the whole cost, except for a capital contribution of £2,000 from the Chinese Government, which has agreed—and this is one of the chief features of the scheme—to accept the certificates issued by the Kiao-chau High School as a qualification for admission to the Chinese Government service.
While the University will be strictly undenominational, facilities will be given to religious bodies who wish to maintain hostels of their own, under such rules as the governing body of the University shall lay down. The essential feature of the scheme is that all students shall reside in colleges and hostels where they will be constantly in touch with the British professorial staff, and this is the feature which above all others commends itself to the Chinese themselves. They will thus be withdrawn from the unwholesome influences which too often surround Chinese students in a Chinese city and even in their own homes, whilst Hong-kong is so largely Chinese, and Chinese at its best, that they will not be exposed to the same danger of becoming entirely denationalized to which those who are sent away for years together to a foreign country so frequently succumb.
Nowhere has contact with the West served more happily than at Hong-kong to develop the best features of Chinese character. The Tung-wa Hospital is one case in point—an institution maintained and directed entirely by the Chinese for philanthropic purposes, which include not only the nursing of the sick and the burial of the dead, but the administration of charitable relief in other forms during periods of special stress.
"The Chinese Government," it is stated, "repose the fullest confidence in German enterprise in this important educational question," and substantial concessions, of which the expediency has yet to be proved, have been made to the Chinese Government in order to secure its confidence by reserving to it a certain control over the course of instruction in Chinese through a resident Chinese inspector and a special commissioner from Peking who will attend at the final examinations. Otherwise "the management of the whole school is exclusively German, and the German teaching staff will be appointed from Germany," for the main object of the institution is to teach the rising generation of Chinese "to appreciate German intellectual life and to get a liking for the German character—a liking," the report adds with commendable frankness, "of which there is a lack in China.”