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We have been too little sympathetic towards young China and have based our policy on the assumption that they are a noisy undisciplined crowd who ought to be severely discouraged or at least ignored. Too many English people-business men especially have expressed the view that such higher education is a curse.
One member of our University Council, Finance Committee and Court stated that he would not have been on any one of these Committees had he not been put there by ordinance, that is to say he was serving on a Council whose purpose was to realize an aim, to which he was strongly opposed.
This statement although made by one individual is undoubtedly an opinion that has been held by many business men in the past and still held by many to-day, though it is not given so frankly.
In this matter our position is very different from that in India for the graduate of Hong Kong is not likely to be a political nuisance in the colony, even if he does become one in China.
China must have western-trained students, University graduates, and if we refuse, as we have refused, to play our part then the privilege of educating the leaders of China must pass to the United States of America, France, or Germany.
It would be a good thing if some good men could be seconded from England to work in the pure Chinese Universities in Canton, Pekin, and Nanking. Their salaries would have to be guaranteed from England. Several Germans are working in the Sun Yat Sun University in Canton and in the medical schools there, but they have been compelled to accept such positions through economic pressure at home. English firms have been slow to recognize the value which Chinese attach to scholarship, and have thereby lost, as the report rightly states, an excellent means of winning the goodwill of China.
I was very much impressed last summer when I was up in Yunnanfu, which is a considerable distance inland, by the wave of excitement which spread over the town when the Examination was held for the selection of three candidates for the University course in Hong Kong.
These were 3 scholarships which, I believe, though I am not certain, were given by the British American Tobacco Company.
It was a magnificent advertisement for this country. The Consul and his secre- tary gave the test to over eighty candidates. Five schools at least claimed the honour of educating the successful scholars, who at once became the most important and the most envied of all students. The cost of these scholarships is about £210 per annum at present rate of dollar.
I quote this case to show how strong is the appeal of scholarship to the ordinary people.
There are large British firms in China, but they seem to have neglected this method of cultivating Chinese goodwill. I have not heard of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank or Jardine Mathesons making any considerable contributions to any such institution for higher education.
Twelve thousand dollars is collected with some difficulty, I believe, annually from between 70 and 80 firms in Hong Kong to help the teaching on the commercial side. Butterfield and Swire have been generous benefactors to the University in the past. Their largest gift of £35,000 I understand was a gesture of goodwill towards the Chinese who were maintaining a severe boycott against them in Swanton.
On the whole, however, there has been no whole hearted enthusiasm on the part of the British in the East for the higher education of Chinese and it is partly for that reason that the Chinese have turned to the United States of America.
I suggest that—
(a) 100 scholarships, 25 each year be given to various provinces to Hong
Kong University, majority in the first place for training teachers.
Cost 150,000 dollars or £7,500 per annum present rate of exchange;
(b) ten post graduate scholarships 5 each year be given for those selected
from above tenable in England.
Cost £5,000 per annum;
(e) English lecturers, to go for 5 years, be sent to Chung San University (Canton), Pekin National University, South Eastern University, Nanking; (d) distinguished scholars should go from English Universities for a University
term in China.
The money to finance this modest scheme must come from the Imperial Govern- ment, from British firms with important interests in China or members of such firms who having made fortunes have retired to England, or from the money allocated to the China Universities' Committee-£200,000-by the British Government from Boxer
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Indemnity funds. The Hong Kong Government which has generously supported the institution in the past and has but recently increased its annual subsidy cannot reason- ably be expected to support any new scheme, which in any case is imperial and not local.
A larger scheme on similar lines was drawn up by the Hong Kong University authorities, when it was thought that the whole of the money from the Boxer Indemnity funds would be used for educational purposes in China.
The object of this more ambitious plan was to realize the purpose which the Economic Mission to the Far East had in mind, viz., to win a place for British ideals in higher education in China and at the same time challenge the supremacy of the United States of America in that field, which the Economic Mission regrets to see existing.
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