A strange and 'challenging' encounter with the professor

WHATEVER MAY or may not have been said by the various parties in the Robert Chung Ting-yiu affair, anyone who has had dealings with Professor Cheng Yiu-chung, the University of Hong Kong vice-chancellor, will not be surprised at the accusations levelled at him.

Pugilistic, combative, eager for a battle: all these descriptions have been used of Professor Cheng. He might even agree - he says he 'likes people to challenge him'. But face-to-face, the impression is not so much of someone eager for a fight of equals as of someone only interested in laying down a gauntlet to duellists over whom he has a distinct advantage.

In fact, his words and actions frequently seem at odds. This former member of the Beijing-appointed Preparatory Committee, a current deputy to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and, as of last week, member of the Election Committee that may elect the Chief Executive in 2002, says he is not interested in politics. His colleagues despair of his lack of social skills, yet he is highly connected.

We should be fair. Professor Cheng has told his staff that he does not much like journalists, and the 1.5-hour meeting between this example of the breed and Professor Cheng took place at a particularly thorny time in 1997, when the university chief was under attack for bringing sweeping changes to the sleepy HKU campus during his first year as head. So he may not have been at his most genial with this visitor.

Still, instant impressions are unavoidable of someone who keeps their hands tightly at their sides in response to the visitor's arm extended for a handshake. Such impressions increase significantly when the visitor is placed on a low sofa while Professor Cheng sits in a high office chair opposite. The visitor might quickly assume that this tactic of placing your adversary on a lower level has been learned from management books, which Professor Cheng waves frequently, expressing himself particularly fond of Jack Welch, the boss of General Electric, renowned for slashing the company's workforce.

Despite his stated liking for debate, in his first year of office, which began in March 1996, he removed various discussion groups and was accused of dictating what the university should do, listening only to a select senior group of academics around him.

One member of staff who left in 1997 said Professor Cheng had complained that the university was 'the most socialist institution in the world' because it worked through many committees. Since then, Professor Cheng's powers have been formalised into a system whereby he appoints his seconds-in-command and faculty deans to a 'streamlined' and 'executive-led' management structure.