Copy.
(F 3499/6/10).
Hong Kong University.
4
Last week a meeting was held at the Colonial
Office to consider the claims of the Hong Kong University
to a share in the Boxer Indemnity and the representatives of
the University inform me that a letter from Sir A. Chamberlain
to Mr. Amery was read in which the former quoted a story
which I had told him to the effect that in 1913 the Governor
of Nanking said that he would not send Chinese students as
Government scholars to Hong Kong because they might be pushed
off the pavement by Europeans. The quotation is correct,
but the Governor's remark may be misunderstood, for I was told
that in the same letter Sir A.Chamberlain asked how many
Chinese students there were in the University and seemed to
think that they were in danger of being illtreated by the
non-Chinese students.
In 1913, as now, the University of Hong Kong was
essentially a University for Chinese, other students hardly
amounting to 10% and there was no danger of Chinese students
meeting with anything but kind and sympathetic treatment
from all Europeans in the University itself or in the
extensive grounds and playing fields or in its neighbourhood.
But all that time (and for many years later) Europeans did
not behave well to Chinese in Shanghai, Hong Kong etc. and
refused to mix with them socially as equals. They were
treated as coloured persons are (or at least were 30 years
ago) treated in the Southern States of America. Except at
Government House and in the residences of people connected
with Education, no Chinese, even wealthy men who had been
educated/