HONG KONG UNIVERSITY DVISORY COMMITTEE
Confidential
No.HIKUAC ?
Extract from a letter from Sir Andrew Caldecott, K, C. M. G.
Former Chancellor of the Univeraity
141 7
*
I was extremely worried in 1936 to find how very little real interest the Hong Kong Chinese took in the University. There was no pride in it and I failed utterly to get Ho Tung, Shon Son Chow, Su Tong Sen, Aw Boon Haw, Ho Kam Tong, etc. etc. to lend it any financial or other practical support. They were far more interested in the new University near Canton (Lu Ngan or some such name) and the university founded by Dr. Lim Boon Keng (near Hankow I think - please forgive my "Singapore memory"!) The reason patently lay in their preference for a Chine as-inspired Chinese-run institution over one originated by the "Red-haired". The gravity of the position centred of course in the facts that Hong Kong is far too small a territory to absorb the output of a University and that China in her modern nationalistic mood gives preference to the alumni of her own universities in making Governmental,
professional technical and business appointments on the mainland.
I have no doubt, moreover, that if (it has long been a pretty big IF) the Hong Kong University is to have an assured future it must look for the major part of its revenues, endowments and patronage to the local Chinese; the Colony could not afford (or, if afford, justify) financing it from taxation as a state institution. Nor would such complete dependance on the Treasury, even if feasible, be compatible with the rightful status of a University. Reconstitution, even temporary, by a necessarily entirely non-Chinese Committee in this country would in my judgment fatally prejudice any chances that there may be of getting the local Chinese support, ŝinancial and otherwise, essential to a successful and permanent resurrection. It would be better that the University should never open rather than that, having reopened, / it should later have to be closed down. The Chinese must, I
consider be brought in on the ground floor of any rehabilitation.
Your letter states that immediate reconstruction of the University will be necessary "in order that it may be in a position to meet those urgent demands that will be made on it for doctors, teachers and other qualified persons to assist in restoring normal conditions." How long will this demand last? For less than a
decade, I should say; and surely this is not a sufficiently lasting demand to justify the hasty reconstruction of the University without consultation with, anu the collaborat ion of, the people of the Colony? If the Colony will require ( and I agree that it inevitably will) a Training College for its future servants over the post-war years surely would it not be better and wiser for the Colonial Government to form an ad hoc Institut lon (renting the University premises and footing the bill for all running expenses not recoverable from fees) rather than rehabilitate the university without the local support essential to permanent success? Gircumstances have indeed become so radically different from those cbtaining when Lord Lugard founded the Hong Kong University that one may reasonably feel it due to his memory that the question of reconstruction on anything like the old lines
/should