Chinese University of Hong Kong
The Chinese University of Hong Kong is a public university in Sha Tin, New Territories, Hong Kong.
Established in 1963 as a federation of three collegesChung Chi College, New Asia College, and United College, it is Hong Kong's second-oldest university, with the first being the University of Hong Kong. Predecessors of the university included St. John's University, Lingnan University and Yenching University, alongside 10 other Christian universities in China.
The university is organised into nine constituent colleges and eight academic faculties, and remains the only collegiate university in Hong Kong. The university operates in both English and Chinese.
Four Nobel laureates are associated with the university, and it is the only tertiary institution in Hong Kong with recipients of the Nobel Prize, Turing Award, Fields Medal, and Veblen Prize sitting as faculty in residence.
History
Origins
The university was formed in 1963 as a federation of three existing colleges. The first of these, New Asia College, was established in 1949 by anti-Communist Confucian scholars from mainland China amid the Chinese Communist Revolution there. Among the founders were Ch'ien Mu, Tang Junyi, and Tchang Pi-kai. The college's curriculum focused particularly on Chinese heritage and social concerns. The early years of this school were tumultuous, with the campus relocating several times between rented premises around Kowloon. Academics there were often self-exiled from the mainland and struggled financially, with students sometimes sleeping on rooftops and teachers forgoing pay to sustain the college. Funds were gradually raised and the school moved to a new campus in Kau Pui Lung, built with the support of the Ford Foundation, in 1956.File:New Asia College SSP.jpg|thumbnail|left|Former campus of New Asia College in Sham Shui Po
Following the Communist revolution in China and the breakdown in relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States with the 1950 outbreak of the Korean War, all Christian colleges and universities in China were shut down. Chung Chi College was founded in 1951 by Protestant churches in Hong Kong to continue the theological education of mainland churches and schools. The 63 students in its first year of operations were taught in various churches and rented premises on Hong Kong Island. The college moved to its present location in Ma Liu Shui in 1956. By 1962, a year before the founding of CUHK, Chung Chi had 531 students in 10 departments taught by a full-time faculty of 40.
United College was founded in 1956 with the merging of five private colleges in the Guangdong province: Canton Overseas, Kwang Hsia, Wah Kiu, Wen Hua, and Ping Jing College of Accountancy. The first school president was F.I. Tseung. The original campus on Caine Road on Hong Kong Island accommodated over 600 students.
In 1957, New Asia College, Chung Chi College, and United College came together to establish the Chinese Colleges Joint Council.
Foundation
In June 1959, the Hong Kong government expressed its intent in establishing a new university with Chinese as the medium of instruction. The same year, the Post-Secondary Colleges Ordinance was announced to provide government funding and official recognition to New Asia, Chung Chi, and United colleges in hopes that the money would "enable them to raise their standards to a level at which they might qualify for university status, probably on a federal basis". The ordinance was enacted on 19 May 1960.The Chinese University Preparatory Committee was established in June 1961 to advise the government on possible sites for the new university. The following May, the Fulton Commission was formed to assess the suitability of the three government-funded post-secondary colleges to become constituent colleges of the new university. The commission, headed by Vice-Chancellor John Fulton of the newly-established University of Sussex, visited Hong Kong over the summer and produced an interim report recommending the establishment of the federal university comprising the three colleges.
The Fulton Commission report was tabled in the Legislative Council in June 1963, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong Ordinance was passed in September of that year. The school was officially inaugurated in a ceremony at the City Hall on 17 October 1963, officiated by the founding chancellor, Sir Robert Brown Black. The next year, Li Choh-ming was appointed the first vice-chancellor of the university. The university originally consisted of the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Science, and the Faculty of Social Science. Construction began at the site of the new campus in the Ma Liu Shui area, where Chung Chi College was already established, for new facilities to house central administration and the relocated New Asia and United colleges.
1963–present
Construction of the new campus continued throughout the 1960s to a development plan produced by W. Szeto and Partners. Above the valley occupied by Chung Chi College, on two plateaux formed by granite quarrying for the Plover Cove dam, the quarters for the other two colleges would flank the Central Campus housing administrative buildings and other shared facilities. Some of the most iconic buildings on campus, like the University Library, were built in this period along the monumental axis of the University Mall in the subdued concrete aesthetic for which the school is known. The School of Education, which would later become a faculty, was founded in 1965. The Graduate School, the first in Hong Kong, was founded in 1966 and the first batch of master's degrees were awarded the following year.File:Chinese University of Hong Kong 香港中文大學.JPG|thumbnail|left|View from Chung Chi College towards New Asia College on the summit
In the early 1970s, New Asia and United Colleges moved into their new premises on the highest plateau of the campus. The Student Union was established in 1971, as "The Student Union of The Chinese University of Hong Kong". The School of Medicine was founded in 1977 and its teaching hospital, the Prince of Wales Hospital in nearby Sha Tin New Town, was established years later in 1984.
The university constitution was also reviewed in the 1970s with an aim to assessing the school's growth and charting its future. In 1975, the chancellor appointed an external commission, again chaired by John Fulton, to review the university constitution. Aside from Fulton, the commission comprised I.C.M. Maxwell, Sir Michael Herries, and C.K. Yang. The commission held five days of filmed hearings to garner comments from stakeholders. This second Fulton Report recommended that academic policy, finances, matriculation of students, appointment of staff, curriculum, examinations, and the awarding of degrees fall under the purview of the university administration. Buildings would also be maintained by the university regardless of which college owned them. The colleges would be entrusted with small group "student-oriented teaching". Rationalisation was suggested to reduce duplication of efforts among the different colleges.
The federal structure of the university would thus be replaced by something closer to that of a unitary university. This was controversial among the colleges. The Board of Governors of New Asia College flatly rejected the recommendations of the report, alleging that it would destroy the collegiate system, turning the colleges into "empty shells". Dr. Denny Huang, a longtime member of the Board of Governors of Chung Chi College, criticised the effort to centralise powers and stated that the college governorship would be reduced to "nothing more than managers of an estate". The Fulton Report recommendations were packaged into the Chinese University of Hong Kong Bill 1976. In defence of the bill the acting Secretary for Social Services, M.C. Morgan, said that "a situation with each college developing into a little university of its own was not compatible with the sensible evolution of a modern major seat of higher learning". The changes recommended by the report came into effect in December 1976.
The first non-founding college, Shaw College, was named after its patron, Sir Run Run Shaw, who donated five hundred million Hong Kong dollars toward its establishment in May 1985. The Chinese University of Hong Kong Ordinance was passed by the Legislative Council in July 1986, and the fourth college was officially opened in March 1990 by Sir Run Run Shaw and Governor David Wilson.
The 1990s brought about another building boom. The original Chung Chi teaching and administration blocks were demolished and replaced with much larger and modern structures in several phases over the course of a decade. The Ho Sin-Hang engineering block opened in 1994 to house the new School of Engineering. In 1994, the school transitioned to the British-style three-year bachelor's degree system. The Hong Kong Internet Exchange, a metropolitan network backbone, was founded in 1995 and remains an internet hub for the region. According to the Snowden Revelations in June 2013 the HKIX was targeted and hacked by the NSA.
In the 2000s, the university underwent another period of expansion, in part to accommodate increased student numbers brought about by the 334 Scheme. Five new colleges came into operation: Morningside College and S. H. Ho College were announced in 2006, and were followed in 2007 by C. W. Chu College, Wu Yee Sun College and Lee Woo Sing College. These colleges are smaller in scale than the older ones, each comprising only one or two blocks rather than an entire section of campus and housing fewer students, but they nonetheless each contain the usual array of facilities like student hostels, amenities and communal dining halls. New teaching blocks and a student amenity centre were also opened near the railway station.
Goddess of Democracy
On 29 May 2010, when the CUHK student union sought to permanently locate a 'Goddess of Democracy' statue on campus, the administrative and planning committee of the university convened an emergency meeting for 1 June, chaired by incumbent vice-chancellor Lawrence Lau, to consider the request. The application was turned down; the reason provided was the need for the university to maintain political neutrality. Staff and students objected to the refusal, however, accusing the committee of self-censorship; students declared they were prepared for a stand-off against the university, saying they would ensure the statues were accommodated on campus "at all costs".A student meeting was convened, and student union President Eric Lai told 2,000 attendees that the university officials should apologise for their opposition of the art display. On 4 June, bowing to public outcry and student pressure, the university relented, and allowed the statue on campus.
Vice-chancellor-designate Joseph Sung, who was consulted on the vote in absentia, admitted that it was the biggest political storm in 21 years. He revealed that, in addition to preserving political neutrality, safety and security concerns were factors in the decision. He also drew a distinction between this application – for a permanent University installation – and hypothetical applications for short-term expressions of free speech, suggesting the latter would have been more likely to be approved, but he criticised the management team as "immature" and "inexperienced" in handling the incident.
An editorial in The Standard criticised the committee's naivety in not anticipating the reaction. It was also highly critical of Sung for seeking to distance himself from the decision with such a "lame excuse". Outgoing vice-chancellor Lawrence Lau defended the committee's decision as "collective and unanimous" after "detailed consideration," citing the unanimous vote of the administrative and planning committee, and he disagreed with Sung's characterisation of the management team. While the vote was unanimous, however, Sung stated that he had suggested the wording of the decision include the qualification that the committee "had not reached a consensus."
The student union said the two professors should have communicated to reach a consensus, and that Lau's reply "failed to explain why the school used political neutrality as a reason to reject the statue."