copy/DS
Fo.s/0 788 (13980/600/47)
My dear Scott,
BRITISH EMBASSY
NANKING
3rd November, 1947
112
I recall that in former days the Embassy at Peking used to send to the Foreign Office reports on important developments or public statements affecting education in China. For example I was given the task some time towards the end of 1933 of drafting a comprehensive report on China's revised educational policy. Such material we understood, was of interest to certain semi-official organisations concerned with education in its general world-wide aspects.
2. In case that the position in this respect may not have changed in the intervening years, I enclose copies of what can be regarded as the official English version of Dr. Hu Shih's recent 10 years education plan for Academic independence of China", which has given rise to some controversy among educationalists and intellectuals, as indicated by the various comments also quoted in the enclosed Government Information Office Bulletin (No. 125 of October 27th).
3.
Dr. Hu's thesis, roughly speaking, seems to be that rather than send out a continuous stream of young Chinese to study abroad (with the atten- dant drain of foreign exchange), China should stream-line her own Universities so that there would emanate one or two institutions of higher learning with the equivalent cachet of Oxford and Cambridge or Yale and Harvard. To achieve this objective it would be advisable not to dissipate talent and effort haphazard among a multitude of miscellaneous universities but rather to concentrate upon a carefully selected few – in which connec- tion his estimate of the right number is five in the initial period of five years, with five more in the second half of his "10 year plan".
4. In addition to its disquisitions on the theory of education and the qualifications for a degree, Dr. Hu's essay contains some interesting statistics of China's existing higher educational facilities. There is . moreover a pertinent reference to the proportion of national and local revenue required to be devoted to popular education in view of the fact that at the present time most of the government's income must be absorbed by the costs of the civil war and graft wastage.
5.
Though all this is probably no more than another of those academic blue-prints in which Chinese specially delight, the signature of Hu Shih carries more than average weight in cultural circles throughout the world so that I felt you might like to have this literary contribution on educational reform in this country on your files if only for personal perusal and reference.
A. L. Scott, Esquire,
China Department,
Yours ever,
(sgd.) LEO H. LAMB.
Foreign Office, London, S.W.1.
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