Success story for the thinking man

Antony Leung Kam-chung admits sometimes to suffering squirms of embarrassment as he chairs meetings of the powerful University Grants Committee, the body which sets policy and allocates funds to tertiary education.

'I never got a first-class honours degree,' says the Executive Councillor who is also managing director of Chase Manhattan Bank. 'In fact, I almost flunked out of university.' That was not because he was not a bright student. The year he graduated from Ying Wa College in 1970, his marks in the school exams were the highest of any non-science student in Hong Kong. And his first year studying economics at the University of Hong Kong saw him do brilliantly.

Then Mr Leung discovered there was more to university life than the classroom. He plunged into student politics, was an activist in youth and public affairs, stood for the first open elections for the Student Union Council - and won.

At the end of that first studious year, his tutors nominated him as one of five Hong Kong students to sail on the Universe Campus, the ambitious, imaginative floating university that took international students around the world.

It was a wonderful opportunity and one he vastly appreciated as the vessel - the creation of shipping billionaire C.Y. Tung (father of the Chief Executive) - stopped at ports in Asia, Middle East, Africa and finally put into New York.

The voyage opened the eyes of the poor boy from Hunghom. It was his first trip out of Hong Kong. Rubbing shoulders with students from other lands at the height of the era of youthful unrest and protest gave him a new view of the world.