Hong Kong Graduates ‘Will Have Vital Role’

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31772, 31 August 1968, Page 14

Hong Kong Graduates ‘Will Have Vital Role’

“China will, one day, be united and, when that time comes, the graduates of the Chinese University of Hong Kong will have a vital role,” said the Vice-Chancellor of the university (Dr Choh-ming Li) in Christchurch yesterday. Dr Li said his university was the only one teaching in Chinese “without ideological constraint” All instruction was in Chinese but students were also required to know English so that they could understand English texts and lectures if necessary. The university was established five years ago primarily to preserve the oldest continuous culture in the world. But other practical considerations were that Hong Kong, with a population of about 4m, was divided into those schooled in Chinese and those schooled in English. A university was needed for the first group, and the Chinese University already had 2000 students, 95 per cent Chinese. The older University of Hong Kong taught in English. A major Chinese University policy plank was that Chinese studies should be a major feature. For this reason the university already had the interest of those in the United Kingdom, the United States, Europe, and Australasia as all of them rei cognised the historic significance of Chinese culture and the present and future importance of the Chinese race which, at 750 m, now represented nearly a quarter of the whole of humanity. “Whatever regime governs China, it is an entity which all the Powers must recognise Stamp Issue To commemorate the bicentenary of Captain Cook’s first voyage to the South Pacific, the Cook Islands will issue a set of eight multicoloured stamps. The face value of the set is $l. Mr J. Berry, of Wellington, designed the stamps, which will be on sale in tse Cook Islands from September 12 to December 31. First-day covers in two designs, may also be bought from the Philatelic Bureau, Rarotonga. They should be ordered three days before the first day of i issue.

and there is particular interest for the Pacific,” said Dr Li. Dr Li said that about a third of Hong Kong’s population was native to the island and two-thirds had come from the Chinese mainland in the last 20 years. There was not much movement now because China bad rigid exit policies and Hong Kong was equally rigid about arrivals from China. Dr Li left China in 1949 because of the new regime, taught economics and business administration at the University of California at Berkeley, and took his present post because he believed Chinese youth should be “exposed to all frontiers of human knowledge and thought in their own language and without prejudice. “Some day, when things settle down, our graduates will promote good international relations for China," Dr Li said.