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2. Sir Edward Gent said he had, until recently, been concerned for many years past with Hong Kong affairs, but if he ventured on any predictions or ideas about the future of Hong Kong, his remarks should be taken as essentially personal and not necessarily the views of the Colonial Office.
Ho regarded the Committee as an extremely important body since it was asked to take decisions of lasting value, as he hoped, to the british position in the Far East. The paper. to which he would draw the particular attention of the Committee was No.HKUAC 3. It was no secret that the British position in Hong Kong was questioned, on nationalist grounds in China. That position could be defended in various ways. For instance, when the place was ceded to us hundred years ago it was a barren rock inhabited only by a few fishermen; the material growth of Hong Kong, now one of the great occan ports of the world and a centre of business, is largely a British product. But there is something more than mere build- ings, port end wharves: there are courts, police and all the other concomitants of law and order, which not only provide a settled life in Hong Kong itself but are of value to China as well. In a centre of disturbance Hong Kong had been a valuable oasis for Chinese industry, and if a vote were taken in South China, Sir Edward thought that great numbers of people there would favour Hong Kong remaining under a non-Chinese administration. But could we afford to encourage the sort of opinion referred to in the last paragraph of No. 3 that Britain is associated in the Chinese mind with questions of commerce rather than culture. This surely suggested that there should be no going back on the purpose of the founde: as set out in the first paragraph of No. 3, namely that Hong Kong University should be a centre from which would emanate an influence profoundly affecting a nation numbering one-fourth of the population of the world. Is Hong Kong only to serve commercial int rests, and thus support the widespread belief that wo are a nation of shopkeepers, asked fir Edward. Rther he thought that the conditions of law and order which wo had brought to Hong Kong should serve cultural as well as commercial interests. If so an essential concomitant was the maintenance and development of Hong Kong University on the lines originally intended.
Referring to future political development,
Sir Edward Gent said that Hong Kong was essentially a large ocean port with no hinterland but a teeming city round the harbour. An embryo Municipality was developing before the war, and he could suppose that a form of municipal government with a harbour board would be the future line of development. The city was 99 per cent. Chinese, a grant proportion of whom came from Canton and other South China ports: It seemed to him that if this development were as he foresaw, we should be rolying in 20-50 years' en the products of Hong Kong University, and it would be most important that there should be no rift between Hong Kong graduates and their colleagues in China on the ground that the former were British subjects. This could bost be achieved by s much interchange of students and teaching staff as possible. If Hong Kong University came to serve only the narrower needs of the British Colony and wore out of touch with the authorities in China itself, the future of Hong Kong would be seriously compromised. We could not in his view afford to drop Hong Kong University, nor could we afford to
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