Bulletin Vol. 9 No. 2 Nov 1972

not select their major and minor subjects by departments until the second year. The aim of this new plan is to train students for leadership through both the generalist and the specialist approach, thus enabling them to become better specialist s in order to adapt themselves to society's ever-changing demands. This is not to say that we are reverting to the traditional concept that places liberal-art s education above specialization. In point of fact, the two are indivisible. No one can hope to become a specialist of the firs t rank without being a broadly educated person. The Chinese University is prepared to bring all its resources to bear on raising the efficiency and the standard of its various elements in order to meet thi s new challenge and realize this long-range plan. We aspire to develop into an institution of excellence. In connection with this new plan, I have also some good news to repor t to you. In response to our request the Government has recently approved an increase by fifty per cent of th e number of undergraduates at The Chinese University i n the next five years. While the original plan was to increase the enrolment by only sixteen per cent above the present level, now we will be able to more than triple that rate. By the 1977-78 academic year , the undergraduate enrolment of The Chinese University will have increased from the present 2,500 t o around 3,800; and the total University enrolment will have reached 4,200, with the addition of the number of students in postgraduate studies. It should be realized that to accomplish this goal requires the united and unswerving effort on the part of the entire faculty and student body, all past and present graduates of the University, and the publi c at large. I am confident that we do not have to wait nine years, but in six years' time, in similar circumstances as these, there will be young men and women numbering fifty per cent more than yourselves who, upon leaving the Congregation, will each be able to say as you will: “ I am a graduate of The Chinese University." Mr. Li Fook-Wo 's Speech I rise to congratulate the graduates. It was not by accident that you were capped yesterday. Your cap is the crown of many years of study. May I speak for the whole local community in welcoming you into active participation i n the Hong Kong economy and culture. May you prospe r and help others here to enjoy a fuller life. To our Honorary Graduates, I wish to say that this University is proud t o be associated with you. Those with whom you share this dinner tonight and all other generations of graduates wil l look up to you as models in their efforts to extend human knowledge and contribute to the welfare of mankind. I have been asked to offer a few words of advice to our young graduates, which I hesitate to do as we all know that a Chinese banque t is too important an occasion to be disturbed b y serious thinking. Therefore, brevity should exceed gravity at such events. You all know the common saying that “ i t takes ten years for a tree to grow and a hundred years for the fruits of education to ripen". Since education is a life-long learning process, le t us live to learn and learn to live. Lao Tze taught us that “a tree one can hardly embrace grows from a tiny seed”. Often, great careers have humble beginnings. In our own careers, let us not aim to start at the top, but start from the soil of honest effort, combining what we have learned with helpfu l advice from others. In this pragmatic community of ours, when something is offered t o others, something is expected in return. In ancient China, young people were taught to “do their good turn and not mind the outcome" . It is in this spirit that we should serve our fellow-men. Because man has a social nature, his personal development and the progress of society hing e on each other. Mencius said, "Weather is less important than a fertile field, and a fertile field less important than human harmony." "Human harmony" ma y be taken to mean ‘‘peace ”， "cooperation" and "fraternity". These are precisely what I hope our graduates will try to bring about in the family of man. We are a Chinese University, bu t we are set in an international context , and supported by an international community with an unusual opportunit y to look in two directions at once. Hong Kong's students, ideas, and products trave l everywhere. Therein lies the peculiar responsibility of our tw o universities. Hong Kong is at a cross-road or focal point of cultures, so that the whole world looks at it’ and expects of it an effort at comparison, assessment, and comprehensive thinking, even reconciliation, of oppose d ways of thinking. 5