3.
reconstituted University, the maintainance of a good medical school to meet the Colony's needs, an expansion and strengthen- ing of the Government's organization for the treating of teachers, and the development of the existing Technical school to the point at which it could train efficient assistante for local engineering sergices, Government and commercial. If endowments of the University could be transferred for these purposes, Colonial needs couldbe met at lese-eest to public funds than a restored University wilk need.
8.
There was ample evidence for the Committee's conclusion that such a recommendation would meet very strong opposition. Sir Mark Young in his conference with the Committee spoke decisively against it as a proposal that would be repugnant to local Chinese feeling, and, especially at this time, as likely to be interpreted as the first intimation of an intention of His Majesty's Government to free itself of commitments in China. The dissolution of the University after thirty years of not entirely valueless existence, he thought, would offend not only the British Chinese in
The Committee Hong Kong but all our friends in the Far East. believes that Great Britain, especially at this time, in the regions of science, politics, economics and in the arts of life, has something of value for Chinase acceptance and that a strong, well equipped University in Hong Kong is the aptest means of contact. By its presentation of British ideals in these regions of the mind, and by the development of the fullest exchange of teachers, the Committee believes that the ground will be well prepared for enduring friendli-
ness.
9.
But manifestly a British University of a standard that presupposes challenging comparisons by its situation on the flank of China, is far beyond the resources of a small Colony already faced by the burden of vast material reconstruction and great schemes of social welfare. But anything less no longer will suffice. The only British University in the Far East shouldbe fitted to stand comparison with the best that China herself has done. Merely to continue on the old scale and scope would, in the opinion of the Committee, result in a loss of prestige hardly less than would result from the substitution of a group of technological institutions for a University. British prestige should not be hazard judgment of pretentious inferiority.
10. It is the final judgment of the Committee that the only proper course is to reconstitute the University with the financial help from the Treasury on a basis on which it might in a period of years grow into an institution com-
Meantime parable with the new Universities of Great Britain. immediate provision for an early restart of teaching is ***- necessary on a basis that does not compromise our proposals for development. This Committee approves the steps taken by the University of Hong Kong Provisional Powers Committee. (Appendix to this Report).
11.26
The Committee has been influenced in reaching its decision by the written opinion of two men whose concern has been the fostering of good relations with China. Professor V.Roxby, the representative of the British Council in China and Dr. Joseph Needham, Head of the British Scientific Mission in China have expressed them- selves very deciseively on the value from this point of view, of the University but equally decisively on the need to improve it. Finally we would refer to a later and authoritative Chinese opinion quoted by the Commander in Chief, Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt in Hong Kong, when on March 23rd 1946 he spoke of the occasion of the conferring of war-time medical degrees in the ruins of the University Hall. As reported in the Hong Kong Telegraph he said:
"In each step of the rebuilding of the University it is the intention to bear in
/mind