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Government the University received £260,000 out of the Boxer Indemnity 'Fund and partial endowment of three medical chairs from the Rockefeller Foundation, these two together making almost the whole of its capital endowment. The authorities of the territories from which nearly two-thirds of its students camc contributed no gr nts for its support: It is clearly wrong to attempt to achieve an Impcrial purpose nd leave the full financial responsibility to one small Clony! If the University is to serve as on. instrument for mutual understanding between the. British, and Chinese peoples, the major part or the financial responsibility must fall on Imperial funds. The Colonial revenues, especially in this period of the rehabilitation of Hong Kong, are even less appropriate now than before the war as the source of support for a University which would only indirectly serve some of its needs. A university fulfilling the broad purpose envisaged by the Committee would be serving the interests of the Commonwealth and not merely the United Kingdom; the Committee hope s therefore that consideration, in due course may be given to the possibility of enlisting financial help from the Dominions as well as from Great Britain.
(b) Isolation.
14.
The University suffered from isolation in various ways.
9
(i)
Chinese nationalist feeling reached full timde at the time of the "Second Revolution" i.e. the collapse of the reactionary "war-lords" and the establishment of the new central regime in Nanking under the auspices of the Kuomintang. It was, in essence, an inevitable movement of insurgence agains the accumulated humiliations and restrictions which had marked China's international relations in the preceding cra. The establishment of the Nanking regime was in itself the first step towards more normal conditons, and the process received an immediate and momentous encouragement in His Majesty's Government's declaration, in December, 1926, of confidence in and sympathy with the new regime and the national aspirations it expressed. Since then the shackles and anomalies associated with the epoch of the "unequal treaties" have be en gradually cleared away. The Committee would not venture to prophesy how Chinese feeling towards us and other countries may develop during the remainder of this fateful century, but at least it can be said that the stage is set fair for collaboration on terms of equality and reciprocity, and it follows that an opportunity now exists which never existed in any thing like the same measure in the past, of which it behoves the Chinese and ourselves to take full advantage, as equal and essentially like-minded members of the family of nations. Νο one could guarantee that the Chinese sentiment towards a revived University in Hong Kong would remain uniformly friendly and cooperative and undisturbed by any fitful feeling of jealousy or the influence of extraneous events. But there is, so far as we can discern, no special reason for pessimism on this score. It would, naturally, depend largely on the broad conception of the project, the manner in which it was launched, and the way in which it fitted into the general patter of our relations with China.
(ii) Situated in a Cantonese speaking area, it was at a disadvantage in attracting Mandarin speaking students from
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