CO129-576-5 Hong Kong University 13-6-1939 - 23-11-1939 — Page 63

the University of Hong Kong ought to be in a position

to offer to China things that Chinese would be among

the readiest people to value. But if we are to

fulfil this function the University must be improved

and we must be in a position to offer a large number

of scholarships to selected students from interior

China, which in the next generation, may well become

much more important than the coast strip to which

hitherto British interest has been, almost exclusively,

confined. The Chinese Minister of Economic Affairs

has already said that towards a development of sound

Engineering teaching in Hong Kong the Government of

China would give financial help, but it is sufficiently

obvious that for a decade after the end of the

present conflict China will require aid rather than

be in a position to give it. But there is now a

remarkably good chance of winning Chinese goodwill,

and though, nearer home, circumstances are as little

propitious as may be, we must seize this opportunity,

or be too late. Our wish then, is to get the

Imperial Government to recognise the value of the

University as an instrument through which British

goodwill may be expressed with least risk of

failure. Chiang Kai-shek said to me (through my

perfect translator, Mr. Han Lih-wu, the Director of

the British Boxer Indemnity Trust Board) that

hitherto the relations of Great Britain and China

had been commercial and economic, and that the

haggling of merchants was not the surest basis of

permanent friendship. He went on to say "Is it

not time to try to find a more permanent basis of

good relations in mutual understanding and

appreciation of our diverse civilisations?

It

is/

63