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How the Chinese University of Hong Kong was set up for students who couldn’t get into HKU
- The university, which opened in 1963, was made from three existing Chinese language colleges
- It was created for students who lacked the English skills to attend the University of Hong Kong
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“Great possibilities of new Chinese university,” ran a South China Morning Post headline on July 10, 1962.
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“It can do great things for China and for the world. Chinese culture is the world’s oldest and largest […] Within this area Hongkong is one place – some would say, the one place – where true academic freedom is possible,” Holmes H. Welch, an American scholar of Buddhism, told students at a Chung Chi College graduation ceremony, the Post reported.
The institution was to join New Asia College and United College, all Chinese-language tertiary colleges, to form Hong Kong’s second university.
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On July 6, 1960, the newspaper had quoted Hong Kong’s Governor, Robert Black, as saying that Chinese University would extend tertiary education “in the traditions and standards of the Commonwealth to many young men and women at our middle schools who are, at the moment, unable to enjoy such benefits”. There was a need for a university for local Chinese middle school students who lacked the English skills required to enter the University of Hong Kong, the Post reported on September 5, 1962.
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