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 137

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Local desire to retain a University.

British prestige.

met at less cost to public funds than a restored University would call for.

9. But the Committee has ample evidence

that such a change if made, would meet with strong opposition from the Hong Kony Chinese. Sir Mark Young, the returning Governor spoke strongly against it and there is evidence that failure to re- establish the University would gravely disappoint many people of importanco in China. The chango, especially at this time, would lower tho prestige of the Colony in the minds of its neighbours in the Far East; it would be read as a confession that our position in these regions has been weakened, possibly it would be interpreted as the first intimation of a decision of His Majesty's Government to free itself of its commitments in China.

On the evidence we are convinced that t: dissolve the University at this time, after it has been more than thirty years in existence, would certainly have an adverse influence not only among the British Chinese in Hong Kong, but throughout the Far East.

10.

The Committee feels so strongly on this point that it woul: ask for the fullest consideration of the issue. The Univer- sity was destroyed as part of an enemy attack on British cultured prestige in the Far East. It believes that the question of the rofounding of the University is inextricably involved in the greater issue of the maintenance of British prestige as a whole in the Far East. Is the University's candle-light to enlighten the struggles for a renascent East Asia, or are we to leave light and effort to more confident and vigorous powers, or have we deci^e? that forces in the Far East have so devolopod that the evolu-

tion of politics side by side with which we can live in ami ty and security is now mechanically determined? The Committee believes that in the region of politics, economics and in culture generally, the British people have valu.blo contributions to mako and that Chinese contact with a really representative University in Hong Kong were alone in the Far East such a University could develop, would have a value for the Chinese at least as great as any institution that friends of China have hitherto established in that country. Commerce in ideas and points of view, tho porsonal relations achieved by way of interchange of teachers and students, faith in the foundation of our way of life and a power to see the good in another way; these are the materials out of which will

be