CO129-593-2 Rehabilitation of Hong Kong University. For extracted photographs see CN 3-45. Includes 32 photographs depicting-... 10-1-1945 - 20-1-1946 — Page 125

120

long range duties as having priority over them, and decisions and action will have to be taken on the Committee's short term advice long before the long range questions can be settled. The Committee will simply have to do its best to devise means by which the establishment of vested interests is minimised and the field kept clear for a long range policy that might mean anything from a far more important and extensive University than before the war to no University at all.

4. The question then arises whether, if short range action has to be taken long before decisions on the long range issues can be reached, this proposed Committee of ours, which we agreed the other day should be asked to consider long range issues because short range action would be dependent upon long range policy, is the right body to deal now with the three long range questions of policy set out in para. 2 (a) (b) and (c) above.

(a) As regards the British University for China, I feel that the proposed Committee, even as now strengthened, is not really adequately equipped to advise as authoritatively as one could wish on this issue. A lot must presumably depend upon Chinese views and sentiment, both in China itself and in Hong Kong since the liberation, and I am not certain how far even Mr. Sloss himself is in touch with these in their present state. Further, this is primarily a Foreign Office issue. Our Committee would have available the papers on the files, and the individual opinions of Mr. Sloss and of the Hong Kong representatives. But on such an important question as what is the best means of défusing British cultural influence in China, I am not certain that our collective opinions will necessarily carry great weight. To establish a first class British University for China at Hong Kong will cost a great amount of money, and is this Committee equipped to answer the question whether the establishment of such a University is so much the best way of giving the work in comparison with e.g., a system of scholarships from Chines to British Universities, the endowment of Chairs in Chinese Universities, visits to Chinese Universities, etc., that it ought to be adopted? The reply to this doubt may well be that we are not an ideal Committee for the purpose, but that some body must review the situation, and soon, so it should be this Committee.

But, it may be asked, what about Inter-University Council? This body is about to be constituted by the Secretary of State, carrying out a central recommendation of the Asquith Commission's Report, as a body concerning itself with the emergence and growth of Colonial Universities and bringing to bear the most authoritative counsel from British Universities. The answer to this is presumably that the Council is not likely to be holding its first meeting until February, and that the longer we wait before some body starts reviewing this issue, the longer it will be before decisions are taken and the harder it will be to prevent vested interests growing up in one way or the other at Hong Kong itself in the meantime. It may also be the case that the Inter-University Council will not be much better equipped in membership than our Committee, and in some ways not so well for dealing with what is primarily a Foreign Office issue. We are also proposing to have on the Committee two members of the Asquith Commission, Dr. Priestley and Professor Penson, both of whom may well be on the Inter-University Council, and the Council's newly appointed Secretary, Mr. Walter Adams.

(b)