Bulletin Number One 1983

Professor Hsing Mo-huan Professor Hsing is an outstanding scholar, educator and practitioner of economics. He graduated from National Central University in 1942 during the war. He pursued postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, and was later visiting fellow at Harvard and Yale. He served as government economist in various research and advisory capacities in Nanking and Taipei, and during the early 1950s helped to lay the foundation for the national accounting system of Taiwan, thus contributing to its economic policy and economic development. In the 1960s he took up the Chair of Economics at the National Taiwan University, founded the Institute of Economic Research at the Academia Sinica, and became the founding director of the Institute, which he held for the next ten years. He was elected a Fellow of Academia Sinica in 1966. In 1973 Professor Hsing accepted the Chair of Economics at the University, and subsequently served concurrently as, among others, Dean of the Faculty of Social Science , Director of the Economic Research Centre, Director of the Institute of Social Studies and the Humanities, Dean of the Graduate School and Chairman of the Senate Committee on General Education, until he retired as Emeritus Professor in October this year. During his tenure, apart from devoting himself to curriculum development and staff recruitment for the fast developing Department of Economics, he actively participated in the government of the University and worked for its reorganization, making lasting contributions towards establishing the present structure of the University. Despite the weight of responsibility Professor Hsing is nevertheless a concerned teacher and a dedicated research worker. His work over the years has encompassed many areas, including the construction of comprehensive interlocking economic models, measurement of national income, the setting up of national account systems, as well as the formulation of economic policies. He made a highly original contribution towards the method for measuring technological change and inequality in personal income; he also made estimations and computations of Hong Kong's gross domestic product, and made a comparison between Asian and Western countries in their growth rate of manufacturing technology and in income distribution. Although Professor Hsing's field of specialization originated in the West, his research and professional activities are mainly concerned with applying his knowledge to his native land in the East. Steeped in modern learning, he nonetheless remains addicted to the Dream of the Red Chamber and often amuses himself with poetry and calligraphy as typical of traditional Chinese literati. He is a recessive scholar, but at the same time also an active doer and educator. As the University always regards as its special mission the integration of the East and the West, a man who is at home with both the past and the future, with things both Chinese and Western, who can practise a well as discourse, — in short, a man such as Professor Hsing, is surely worthy of its highest honours. Mr. Chancellor, may I therefore request Your Excellency to award Professor Hsing Mo-huan the degree of Doctor of Social Science, honoris causa. NEWS 5