CO129-538-1 Hong Kong University 31-12-1931 - 6-8-1932 — Page 256

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headquarters at Peiping and be composed mainly of residents

in or near that city, we agree that it should avail itself of

every opportunity of consulting and co-operating with both

the Academia Sinica and the Reconstruction Council.

The relations between the sub-committee and the

Board of Trustees will have to be carefully thought out. It was proposed by an influential member of the banking community in China that the sub-committee should be jointly appointed by the Board of Trustees and the Universities China Committee, but such an arrangement would present obvious difficulties. It seems clear that the Universities China Committee should have in China an advisory body which will be in direct subordination to itself. Complications would inevitably arise if the sub- committee had to take its instructions from two bodies, one in China and one in England.

A reference to our observations in section II of this Report will show why we feel unable to recommend U that the corresponding committee should be the Board of Trustees itself, in spite of the fact that an arrangement of this kind might seem at first sight to be both convenient and economical, and also in spite of the injunction laid upon us in the second of our terms of reference to consult with the Board of Trustees with a view to ensuring effective co-operation between the Board and the Committee. We would gladly have recommended that the Board should be the Committee's corresponding committee in China had we felt justified in doing so, if only because such an arrangement would have tended to strengthen the hands of the Board, to increase its influence and prestige, and to emphasise its position as an educational body. Existing conditions seem

to necessitate the appointment of a body other than the Board of Trustees to represent and co-operate with the Universities China Committee, but we think that every effort should be made to BBEE create and maintain cordial relations both between the Board and the Committee and also between the Board and the pro- posed sub-committee.

We do not think it at all likely that the Board of