Tag: University of Hong Kong

Heading the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has become more complicated in recent years because of the city’s fractious politics, its outgoing president and acclaimed scientist Tony Chan Fan-cheong said, on the eve of his departure to another institution. “There have been enormous changes in Hong Kong over the past decade, with the greatest change in politics,” Chan said last week. The 66-year-old mathematician, who was headhunted from the United States to join HKUST in 2009, cited the political storms of Occupy movement in 2014 – in which many students took part the sit-ins to demand greater democracy – and the recent tide of calls for the city’s independence from China. “As the university is a microcosm of the society, the stance of the president, and the school, is between a rock and a hard place,” Chan told the Post. “We may put it simply that any illegal acts are banned. But are [calls for] Hong Kong independence violating laws?” he asked, saying the schools were thrown into difficult situations with no simple answers. The 10 university heads in Hong Kong eventually issued a joint statement, which included a line: “We do not support Hong Kong independence, which contravenes the Basic Law.” Chan dismissed any government pressure behind the rare statement, but admitted the process of drafting and getting everyone to agree was difficult. What was unfortunate, he said, was that public attention was so focused on the issue instead of the university’s strong performance. The 27-year-old school was first in the latest Times Higher Education young university rankings. “Worst of all, society has been torn apart and social development becomes stagnant,” he added.