CO129-531-11 Hong Kong University- general and financial points 14-9-1931 - 8-11-1931 — Page 22

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the finest exponent of the view that happiness depends on

material prosperity....... They have one model and one only,

the U.S.A.

•

gold, wealth, in fact everything that

the United States stands for to-day in the Economic world -

is the lode-star of Young China to-day."

There are at present 2,500 Chinese students in the

United States, and less than 250 in Gt. Britain. Not only

was the whole of the American Boxer Indemnity devoted to

Education, but it was supplemented by large sume from pri-

vate funds for Health and Medical Services which justly

earned the gratitude of China and the admiration of the

world. The Hongkong University itself owes a debt of grati-

tude to the Rockefeller Foundation for the endowment of a

Chair in the Medical Faculty.

Gt. Britain on the other hand has been content to

leave chiefly to the Missionaries the maintenance of her

influence and prestige. She has failed to realise that

what the intelligentsia of China want is modern science and

not Western religion. The bulk of the British Boxer Indem-

nity is to be devoted to Railways, and only a comparatively

insignificant sum is to be assigned to the Hongkong Univer-

sity.

says Prof. Faster

The general attitude of the British towards education

in China is very well illustrated in Shanghai. Although

Shanghai is or was an International Settlement, its adminis-

tration by general consent and approval was very largely in the hands of the British merchants. In this vast town until quite recently there was no Director of Education,

and the total sum spent annually on education was 400,000

taels, the greater portion of this being spent on non-Chin-

ese schools. Yet in the same town 125,000 taels per annum

were spent in maintaining the Municipal Orchestra.

Seeing

that the Chinese are most anxious for western knowledge and

willing to pay for it through taxes, it seems that an excel ent opportunity was lost in giving that education in a British atmosphere, when its value in the pioneering sense