Bulletin No. 2, 2013

Engaging the World 5  Exchange and local students at the New Asia College amphitheatre in the 70’s Student common room when the Office of International Studies Programme was located at United College (80’s) The Chinese University’s first student exchange agreement was signed in 1965 with the University of California system by Dr. Choh-ming Li , a graduate of U.C. Berkeley. Prior to that, the three founding Colleges had had linkages, official and unofficial, with American universities. Chung Chi had had exchange programmes through the network of church-related universities in North America and with some Christian institutions in Asia, helped initially by the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia. It also had ties with certain US colleges which sent graduates interested in Chinese culture to tutor at the College. United had sustained a tie with Williams College since 1961 which allowed graduates to teach English to school teachers in Hong Kong. New Asia had enjoyed strong founding links with Yale and the Yale-China Association, which enabled Yale graduates to teach at New Asia and provided scholarships to New Asia students for graduate study in the US. At founding, the University built on these traditions to expand and diversify its links. The par tnerships expanded in the ensuing decades. Then in the 1980s, there was a marked increase in partnerships as China adopted an Open Door policy and Hong Kong’s handover became a central issue. The most significant expansion, however, came in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, due to the commitment of CUHK leadership, the faster pace of internationalization in higher education generally, and the world’s interest in China’s rise. Hong Kong was perceived as a strategic location for studying China, with not only good learning and research facilities, strong faculty, but importantly, solid traditions of inquiry and academic freedom.