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 207

CONFIDENTIAL

No HKUAC 31

I

HONG KONG UNIVERSITY ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Note on the proceedings of five meetings:

HISTORICAL

porceps

The University was instituted in 1911 on the foundation of a College of Medicine established in 1887 and in- corporated in 1907. Manson and Cantley were the chief influ- ences in these beginnings of medical education in the Colony. The University remembers with some pride that one of the early students of the incorporated College was Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the maker of the Chinese Republic, who, in 1923, in a speech at the University, referred to what in his education for citizenship he owed to Hong Kong, and asked us to teach young Chinese "to govern their cities as ours was governed, to build their roads like ours, and to develop similar health services Such things; he added" are not learnt only in classrooms, or only in practice, but in both". Between 1907 and 1910 a sum of about 1 million Hong Kong dollars was raised for the endowment of a University. Sir Frederick Lugard (afterwards Lord Lugard) as Governor, was interested and took the initiative in 1911 in the passing of a local ordnance to establish a University to extend and broaden the basis of higher education in the Colony. But a wider conception was always in Lord Lugard's mind, namely that the University should be a centre form which would grow an influence "profoundly affecting a nation numbering one fourth of the population of the world, a medium for the maintenance of good relations between Great Britain and China. 11

2.

The Ordinance became operative; the first buildings were erected at the cost of a local banker Sir H. Mody;

Sir Charles Eliot became Vice Chancellor and classes were opened. In the early days developement in medical teaching came first and in 1919 more adequate accommodation for the teaching of Physiology, Pathology and Tropical Medicine was built, and some years later laboratories for Operative Surgery. Hospital provision for clinical teaching was defective but the remedy came when the Government built a fine hospital, the Queen Mary Hospital, in which adequate beds were assigned to University teachers. The supervision of medical education exercisedat periodic visits of one of its officers by the General Medical Council was a source of strength to the Medical Faculty in their demands on the hopelessly inadequate resources of the infant University.

3. An Engineering Faculty gained a good deal of initial help in funds and equipment from local merchants, and British Manufacturers and an attempt was made, it would now appear, mistakenly, to carry out training for degrees in Mechanical, Electrical, and Civil Engineering. The resources of the University were however too widely spread with the result that the only record that the University can regard with satis- faction is that in Civil Engineering. The Government did not

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