Bulletin Number Five 1986

Address by Dr. Ma L in In October 1978 at the City Hall, I received with a deep sense of obligation from Sir Murray MacLehose, then Chancellor of the University, a copy of the University Ordinance, and the University Seal from Sir Y.K. Kan, then Chairman of the Council, and thus took office as Vice-Chancellor of this University. During the past eight years, the University has encountered a number of difficulties and controversies, which we fortunately have been able to live through, it has also been fortunate that considerable progress has been made by the University during the same period in establishing its organizational structure and the direction of its development. That we have been able to do so is clearly a result of the close cooperation of staff and students within the University and also of the goodwill and support extended to us by the Government, the community leaders and our numerous friends, otherwise it would be quite impossible for the University to achieve so much and to attain its present position. Among all the people who have given so much of themselves to the University, our late Chancellor Sir Edward Youde ， who unfortunately passed away in Beijing last week, naturally immediately comes to mind. The great strain and heavy schedule under which he had to work as Governor of Hong Kong is well-known, yet out of that schedule he was able to keep himself informed of the progress we had made, and had also shown understanding and given support to what the University stands for. This has been a source of great encouragement and inspiration to the University during the past four to five years. It is thus with a very heavy heart indeed that my colleagues and students now mourn the loss of a well-respected friend, just as Hong Kong is mourning the loss of a dedicated and much beloved leader. I believe that all of us here can feel deeply this sadness. It is also but natural that the founding father of the University, Lord Fulton, who passed away at the beginning of this year should come to mind. Even as he was becoming advanced in age during the past decade, he nevertheless never turned his mind away from the affairs of the University, and he continued to give the University his wise counsel and look for the best talents on our behalf, thus making important impacts on our future developments. Recalling that it was but last year when he at the age of eighty came all the way to join us at the Congregation for the award of honorary degrees, it is indeed difficult to refrain from feeling sad and nostalgic. Looking back, three to four decades have passed since the three constituent Colleges of the University were founded by scholars from the mainland, and the University itself is now more than twenty years old. I think it would be right to say that this University is no less than the embodiment of the hopes and ideals of two full generations of Chinese intellectuals in their pursuit of academic and cultural developments in China. When the University was first started, it did not yet have a campus, nor a firm organizational structure, and there were myriads of administrative details to be dealt with. Due to his foresight and strong will, the founding Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Choh- ming Li, was able to acquire a spacious campus and to lay down a solid foundation for the University, to conceptualize in modern terms the hopes and ideals of the founding fathers and to translate them into concrete policies and goals, and indeed to put the University on the map of the international higher education scene. I would say it is not merely the University but also higher education in Hong Kong and China which are much indebted to Dr. Li. Undeniably it was difficult for most people to fully appreciate or understand the vision and ambition of Dr. C.M. Li twenty years ago. Thus the University was largely on its own in its efforts to advocate bilingual education and general education, emphasize academic research, actively develop connections with China and international academic institutions, and insist upon what we regard as a more desirable and balanced educational system. For a long time we were not able to evoke the right response to and identification with these initiatives. It is only until recently, when a totally new situation is confronting Hong Kong, that the need for basic changes is beginning to be felt. For instance, the University and Polytechnic Grants Committee has since 1984-85 begun to substantially increase the equipment vote of the five tertiary institutions and also provided indicated grants for research; the Education Commission has in its Number Two Report proposed a greater use of Chinese as a medium of instruction in secondary schools and also the elimination of the language indicator from certificates of public examinations; the Planning Committee for the Third University has also indicated that even though the new university would be mainly for science, technology and business management, it would be wrong to neglect the general education of students. These are far-sighted and progressive measures and proposals which we have indeed long called for over many years. While what we stand for and believe in have in the past been misunderstood as outdated and impracticable, and while they were different from current views of the past, I trust that the public can now appreciate that these are not the aberration of one person or one institution, rather NEWS 3