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5. I have put in red since there will be considerable preparatory work to be done before the Council on the 20th.
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I agree that the meeting ot the Inter-University Council on the 20th May is too good an opportunity to miss for the preliminary consideration of these proposals. We must take care that, if the departmental consideration of them has not then been completed, this preliminary consideration by the I.U.C. is not allowed to prejudice the issues from the Hong Kong point of view. As time is so short and we have so many other preoccupations at the moment,. I have not kept the paper to give the documents the full consideration which they need and I should accordingly be glad to have copies of them all when they are duplicated for distribution to the I.U.C. (In order not to delay the consider- ation by the Finance Department this copying perhaps could be done from such duplicates as are available).
The question now also arises whether we should not revive the "Cox Committee" recommendations that the University should be re-established
"with staff and facilities adequate to make it fully capable of reaching British academic standards. and becoming an effective centre for Sino-British contact in the sphere of learning".
I was not myself dealing with these matters when these issues were last considered, but my recollection is that, at first, the Foreign Office were somewhat lukewarm in their support because they felt that such a proposal might prejudice other means (e.g. the British Council and the Institute at Peking) which they favoured for the purpose which lay behind the Cox recommendations. Now, all these arrangements for Sino-British cultural contact have presumably gone. We and the Foreign Office, and other Departments concerned are about to embark upon discussions with Mr. Malcolm MacDonald as to the best means of stemming the flow of Communism towards South East Asia and we understand that Mr. Bevin is disposed. to regard the retention and defence of Hong Kong as an important bastion in this effort.
It may well be that with China now rapidly falling completely under Communist domination and with the prospect of an anti-British Communist Government in China, there would be little likelihood of students from China being allowed to go to Hong Kong University, and this may well be regarded as a fatal objection to our embarking on a large scheme for the development of that University.
On the other hand Hong Kong has already become virtually our only "shop window" in the Far East, north of Singapore, and the issues for the future
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