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above to Hong Kong, the ease with which he could extend such a visit to cover China would be an argument in favour of our sending in an interim report favouring this if we want him to go there at all. As regards (iii), you and the Committee are just as well or better qualified to have views as I am. H.KAS 5, from the British representative in china, ie relevant-esp. the sentence 10 lines from bottom
(b) The Malavan complication and the idea of a Far East University as mooted in H.K.Ü.A.C. paragraph There has been support for the idea of a single British university for the Far East. If so should it be centred in Hong Kong or Malaya? Channon declared emphatically at our first meeting that whatever else happened Mal aya must have its university and very soon. I agree with him. So I am sure will the Secretary of State, from whom an early public statement on his endorsement of the main recommendation of the 1939 McLean Commission on Higher Education in Malaya that a university college of Malaya should be established at once, is quite a possibility in the immediate future. If that is accepted as the policy for Malaya, what are its bearings on our Committee's problem? Could & Halayan university serve the role of a British university for China instead of Hong Kong? Answer, No, too distant. But could Hong Kong University exist without its Malayan-Chinese and the other overseas Chinese who might prefer to go to Malaya than to the more distant Hong Kong? Answer, Yes, if H.K. University is reconstituted on Lugard lines to serve China, but not if it is only to reappear in its pre-war make-up. In which, as Sloss told us last time, it had come to depend quite substantially for its students on the overseas Chinese from Malaya and elsewhere. The establishment of a Malayan University is, as I see it, therefore, an argument in favour of either reconstituting Hong Kong University to serve Chinese on Lugard lines or not reconstituting it as a university at all. It is very desirable that Channon should be present at this next meeting if possible, and I am writing to ask him to come if he can, and if he can't to make his views clear to you in a letter which you could summarise or read to the meeting. I understand that all he really minds about is that Malaya must have its university, and that its university institution must not be weak- ened by the continuance of the pre-war drain away of Malayan-Chinese to distant Hong Kong.
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Under the same general head Sloss is quite likely to suggest that there is room for partitioning off specialised activities between a Malayan university and a reconstituted first-class Hong Kong university. These ideas should I suggest be ventilated at this meeting and pursued further when we get on to the type of university activities required at Hong Kong at the following meeting.
(c) Finance. This is of course the biggest lion in the path, but I don't think it would be profitable to spend much time on it at this stage. The main point to get clear was already mentioned by you at the first meeting, namely that expenditure on a university designed to spread British influence in China cannot properly come out of the C.D.W. allocation except perhaps for a little help in that relatively
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