HONG KONG UNIVERSITY ADVISORY COMMITTER
Confidential
Part A.
No. HKUAC 18
Extracts from a lecture given by Professor W. J. Hinton on April 2nd 1941 to the Royal Central Asian Society in London on "Hong Kong's place in the British Empire. "
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If all this is true, it would appear that the future of Hong Kong as a University town is more important than its future as a naval base. Hongkong should be a practical school of municipal government, a training ground for British subjects of Chinese race
who are also Chinese subjects. It should be a great University town, where Chinese and British may together foster and develop wisdom, knowledge, science, beauty and art those things which make a State a State and not an ant-he ap. If that seems like a professor's dream, may I point out that the Chinese do not regard their teachers as we do, nor make a sharp division between education and politics.
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No doubt my friend Professor Middleton Smith will remember 1923, when Sun Yat Sen came to us at the University. , He was looking for help from the British, but did not get it and went to the Russians. In his speech he asked Hongkong to teach his young men to govern their cities as our city was governed, to build their roads like ours, and to develop similar health services. Such things are not learnt only in classrooms or only in practice but in both.
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As for the University, it calnot be regarded as purely a matter for Hongkong. At present it seems to fall between two stools, being rather more than is desired by the Colony as the apex to its educational pyramid, but far less than can properly be offered to the Chinese as a specimen of first-class British University eduction. Obviously, for propaganda purposes, anything less than first-class la worse than uselega.
The University was started with funds that would have supplied a moderate technical college. It struggled on, helped, when that became absolutely necessary, by the Colonial Government and getting benefactions from the Chinese, until after thirty years the University now finds itself with barely enough money to carry on its four existing faculties in a small way. With the exception of a portion of the Boxer Indemnit; it has received very little from the Imperial Government to help it in a task that is essentially one of Imperial propaganda.
During its short life a magnificent job of honest teaching was done by an inadequate staff, but the University has never attracted a large number of students. It will not do so until it is able
to provide a complete and very distinguished staff, with all the necessary library and laboratory facilities. This need not consist entirely of distinguished scholars spending their lives.
in Hongkong, but could be recruited for short periods by exchange professorships and travelling fellowships, allowing always
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