CO129-594-1 Rehabilitation of Hong Kong University. For extracted photographs see CN 3-45- Advisory Committee report 29-3-1946 - 3-7-1946 — Page 132

131

Success o University

in Hong Kong.

number of these men now hold posts of high importance in the Central and Provincial Governments of China and in professions and commerce.

3. The extent of the success of the University in meeting local needs has been demonstrated to the Committee by repeated urgent requests from Hong Kong for its early reopening. The Committee has received urgent pleas from the Commander-in-Chief, Hong Kong, from the Chief Officer of the Civil Affairs Administraticn and from Sir Mark Young shortly before his departure from the United Kingdom to take up his Governorship in the Colony. Messages of associations of old students in Hong Kong and Shanghai have cxpressed loyalty to the University and hopos for its reconstruction on ampler lines. As for the bonds between British and Chinese students and staffs, it may be affirmed that the survival in internment of a large proportion of the British teachers of the University is in no small measure due to the persistence and courage of groups of old students who, in spite of the Japanese, mánaged to maintain an intermittent supply of food and money. By 1939 the University ha bucome an organisation closely integrated with the social life of the Colony. There is sufficient evidence that it loomed large, and was regarded as a symbol of the vitality of a rolatively small community.

Partial failure of larger aim.

4.

a) Its poverty.

P

A

But as a "vehicle for the establishment of good relations" the University had not fully achieved the aims of its founders. A measure. of initial success was arrested by the impossibility of adequate staffing and

1919. finance during the war years 1914 The University had been started with no clear conception of the cost of even a small wodern University; in the war period local funds went elsewhere, and the Govern- ment was unable to give adequate help. crisis arose in 1921 and 1922 which were years of depression. An attempt to raise money by a general local appeal failed and the University had to be restored by a large grant from the Colonial Treasury. At a later dato the Governmont found itself able to increase its grant, but between the years 1921 and today the University has never been solvent much less in a position to develop adequately to meet even local demands, except perhaps in Medicine and, later, in Chinese studies.

(b) Chinese