Bulletin Autumn‧Winter 1981

The First Fulto n Commission : Some Personal Memories By Mr. I.C.M. Maxwell formerly Deputy Director of the Inter-University Council It was a very wet and humid evening when, on 25 July 1962, my long-held hope of visiting Hong Kong was at last fulfilled. I still remmeber the impact of that first journey through Kowloon, across the ferry and up to the old Gloucester Hotel where the Fulton Commission was to stay — the throbbing life of the streets notwithstanding the late hour and the pouring rain, the kaleidoscope of colour from the busy, gaily illuminated shops and the neon signs reflected in the shining wet roadways, the fascination of the ferry and the passing junks, and the panorama of multicoloured lights dancing round the harbour's edge. Yet the task of advising on the scope, timing and mechanism for establishing a new "federal-type Chinese University" was no less exciting than the scene. The involvement began for me, in a way, some ten years earlier when I joined the Inter-University Council (IUC); though I had fo r five years been concerned with the development of university education abroad, South-East Asia was new territory for me. A t the first meeting o f the IUC's Executive Committee which I attended, i n October 1952, a major item on the agenda was the report o f the Keswick Committee on Higher Education i n Hong Kong, which confirmed "the extent and urgency of the demand fo r a wide variety o f post-secondary courses, and particularly for degree courses, in the medium of Chinese". Almost at once, therefore, I was introduced to the intriguing question of how, in an unfamiliar part o f the world, such courses could best be launched. The Keswick Committee i n fact had rejected the idea of establishing a separate Chinese university for two reasons. First, they found practical obstacles of finance and staff recruitment, but, more important, they were swayed by a second, philosophical argument — "to found such a university would be to deny the principles which should govern all higher education in Hong Kong. Hong Kong's situation gives it unique advantages as a meeting place for Chinese and Western thought and ways of life and it should be one of the first functions of its university to bring them together . . . This purpose can only be achieved within the walls of one university, for the emphasis must be on partnership and common purpose rather than on rivalry and delimitation of aim". This was evidently a more persuasive argument then than i t might seem to-day when both universities in Hong Kong are well accustomed to co-operation and are each developing their contacts with China. So the Keswick Committee recommended that the existing university should institut e Chinese medium pass degree courses in Arts and Commerce at once, and in Science a s soon a s possible. That was the stage reached when I first became acquainted with the subject. Already, however, difficulties were being encountered — th e existing university was no t thought t o be ready, financially o r otherwise, for such a revolutionary development at short notice— and action was deferred, with far-reaching consequences, to allow time for further reflection while more immediate needs were tackled. During this period o f consolidation i n Hong Kong we in the lUC in London were given cause for concern about the situation by events in Singapore, where i n 1953 the representatives o f 276 Chinese associations resolved t o set up a university of their own. The initiative stemmed partly from dissatisfaction with a pattern of university education thought to be too rigidly British but partly also from an emotional appeal which touched the loyalty o f Chinese dispersed throughout South-East Asia to the traditional culture o f their homeland. Early enthusiasm was, however, dampened and difficulties led eventually to a critical independent assessment of the academic standards o f the university. Here was a cautionary tale which the IUC could hardly ignore in relation t o any other communal demand fo r a separate university, differen t though the local circumstances might be in Hong Kong. Fortunately official polic y i n Hong Kong gradually crystallized in favour of a second university in which Chinese would be the principal medium of instruction, and from 1959 the pace of government backing quickened. I n June, as will be recalled, i t undertook to give selected post-secondary colleges an improved status and financial help t o raise their standards and promised to appoint in due course a commission to advise whether any of these colleges were yet ready for inclusion as components o f a federal university. (The conept of a federal pattern, it will be noted ， appears, as i n East Africa, t o have originated in government thinking.) In October Lord 10