Advertisement
Letters | China is not the real problem with Hong Kong university’s latest appointments
- While the nationality of the two appointees and the possibility that one of them might be a Communist Party member has aroused controversy, what is actually troubling is that the University of Hong Kong’s senior management will be entirely male and skewed towards the applied sciences
Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
I write with regard to your report on the University of Hong Kong’s appointment of two vice-presidents and the resulting disputes. Such conflicts almost always default to splitting along the pro-Beijing vs pro-democracy binary, where the pro-establishment camp has been seen to always gain a de facto upper hand.
Such is the case again today. Doubts and reservations are again framed and dismissed, not unjustifiably, as intentional maligning and sensationalism.
But, let us be clear: the Chinese citizenship of both appointees and the supposed Communist Party membership of one of them are not the real problem and should not be framed as such. Anyone with any knowledge of Chinese politics would know that party membership is more a social and career tool than a sign of political loyalty and ideological alignment.
Instead, let me present two arguments against the appointment: diversity and academic development, which HKU vice-chancellor Professor Zhang Xiang and many other proponents of the appointment appeal to.
As HKU political theorist Professor Joseph C.W. Chan remarked, the appointment of professors Gong Peng and Max Shen Zuojun means there will be no women on the seven-member president and vice presidents’ team: creating a “manel”, if you will. This is hardly appropriate, given that HKU was the first university in the world to launch a HeForShe initiative on campus.
Advertisement