the University of Hong Kong ought to be in a position
to offer to China things that Chinese would be among
the readiest people to value. But if we are to
fulfil this function the University must be improved
and we must be in a position to offer a large number
of scholarships to selected students from interior
China, which in the next generation, may well become
much more important than the coast strip to which
hitherto British interest has been, almost exclusively,
confined. The Chinese Minister of Economic Affairs
has already said that towards a development of sound
Engineering teaching in Hong Kong the Government of
China would give financial help, but it is sufficiently
obvious that for a decade after the end of the
present conflict China will require aid rather than
be in a position to give it. But there is now a
remarkably good chance of winning Chinese goodwill,
and though, nearer home, circumstances are as little
propitious as may be, we must seize this opportunity,
or be too late. Our wish then, is to get the
Imperial Government to recognise the value of the
University as an instrument through which British
goodwill may be expressed with least risk of
failure. Chiang Kai-shek said to me (through my
perfect translator, Mr. Han Lih-wu, the Director of
the British Boxer Indemnity Trust Board) that
hitherto the relations of Great Britain and China
had been commercial and economic, and that the
haggling of merchants was not the surest basis of
permanent friendship. He went on to say "Is it
not time to try to find a more permanent basis of
good relations in mutual understanding and
appreciation of our diverse civilisations?
It
is/
63