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The remedies for the above seem to me to be:-
1.
As a result of the surrender of extraterritorial rights Hong Kong will to my mind assume a much bigger place in the British scheme of things in the Far East than in the past and, if we are to make the most use of it for the good of ourselves and the Chinese we must also try to make it into a cultural centre capable of competing with the American-endowed universities in China. It is surely an Imperial duty to endow it generously to this end and this cannot but yield a dividend in the improvement of our position in the country, for which the English have done so much and can do so much more.
2. One of the cures for this is financial ease; but academic qualifications are not the whole story in dealing with orientals and it is essential to choose men for their personality as well and prune them ruthlessly, if by the end of their agreement they are found incapable of preaching the British gospel in a way to influence the Chinese.
Another means of getting really good staff may be to arrange for exchange with or return (at the expiry of agreement) to universities at home as I am told is the case with the American universities, so that a man may not feel that the acceptance of a post in Hong Kong will put him quite out of touch with things at home or be the end of his career at home.
3. In the past I have often wondered, if this university
would have had a greater influence among the Chinese of China, had it been placed in say Shanghai, which was more accessi- ble and less strange to the people we wanted and much cheaper to live in. However that may be, things have changed now and the only possible situation is Hong Kong. As a matter of fact I have come across the idea of putting it in the Strai ts; but that is a different sphere altogether with different problems and different people and we certainly cannot afford to go further south than Hong Kong.
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4. My natural inclination is to judge the University princi pally on its technical side. There has always been difficulty in getting the Chinese middle class to use their har and in spite of what the dockyards could give in the way of r experi → the Unive ty never did much on its engines7*· · Si·
mɛ
ope.
long Kong and China in remember however having
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