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capital and recurrent expenditure involved, which we tenatively Estimate at approximately £1 million and £100,000 per annum, should be met from Imperial sources, except for a contribution from the Colony on the scale of its pre-war support. We express the hope that His Majesty's Government may consider inviting some of the Dominion Governments to participate in providing the necessary funds for this British centre of learning in the Far East.
3. We consider that the University should be reconstructed as an autonomous institution and on a permanent basis, so far as buildings, endowment and other arrangements are concerned, because, irrespective of any political changes which the future may hold in store, we envisage a lasting scope for its special functions and its representative character.
4.
We cannot emphasize too strongly our conviction that the standards of the University must be such that it can face comparison with those of other universities in the United Kingdom and of Chinese universities. In contrast to its position when first founded, as the only university institution on the Chinese continent, its relative position had radically changed in the period before the war with the development of Chinese universities of first-class standard. It is certain that Chinese institutions, partly with substantial American and other foreign assistance, will regain and surpass their former distinction and standards. For the British Commonwealth to be represented by an impoverished institution, with an overworked staff under equipped and denied the conditions of making contributions to knowledge by research, and yet presuming to call itself a university, would be discreditable. The continuing damage to our prestige involved would be greater than that entailed by a frank confession now that we are not able or willing to restore Hong Kong University, even although that decision would carry with it the implication that we are uncertain of the future of British interests in the Far East and regard the commerce of ideas as a matter of secondary
concern.
5. The development of higher education facilities in British colonial areas in the Far East, particularly the establishment of University of Malaya, will reduce the proportion of students coming from overseas to Hong Kɔng. Our conception of the central purpose and justification of the University, however, implies that it should revert to the function envisaged for it in its earliest days by Lord Lugard, anu that it should especially attract both undergraduate and postgraduate students from the mainland of China, We recommend in our detailed suggestions that there should be a generous scheme of scholarships to Hong Kong for students and research workers from the mainland and appropriate hostel arrangements to minimize the difficulties created by the high cost of living in Hong Kong. We have taken this main purpose into account in defining the scope of teaching and research to be undertaken at the University, and regard it as important that staff appointments should be open to British and Chinese. We repeat, however, that in final analysis it is not scholarships or other material provisions or the particular range of teaching that will attract Chinese students to the University and ensure its widening influence in China, but the quality and standard of its work.
/6.