A former law dean of the University of Hong Kong has hit back at a pro-Beijing newspaper, saying reports blaming him for the faculty's poorer performance in the latest university research assessment exercise amounted to persecution. Professor Johannes Chan Man-mun's comments came after Wen Wei Po on Monday dedicated three pages to reports on the poorer quality of the faculty's research compared to that of Chinese University. The exercise rates research from the city's eight publicly funded tertiary institutions. The reports, quoting official figures before their publication, blamed Chan for the drop in ranking. Chan, who stepped down as dean last year, was accused of excessive political participation, supporting the Occupy Central protests and being a member of the Hong Kong 2020 think tank led by former chief secretary and pro-democracy heavyweight Anson Chan Fang On-sang. The paper cited pro-establishment figures who questioned Chan's suitability to be HKU's next pro-vice chancellor, a position he has been tipped for. "It is really sad to see these persecuting attacks out of political reasons," Chan said. "It is the prevalence of such attacks that make people sad about the future of Hong Kong." Wen Wei Po declined to comment last night. Chan said the University Grants Committee, in charge of the assessment exercise, had emphasised the global influence of research, neglecting the faculty's locally focused work. "For a long time, as we were the only law school here, we found it necessary to contribute to the development of local literature," he said. Purely academic works, though of interest to a wider audience, would have little impact locally, he added. The exercise involved 13 disciplines from each university; a total of 307 international specialists covering each discipline were invited to rate research. The assessors required all researchers from each university faculty to join the exercise, each submitting up to four pieces of research conducted between 2006 and 2013. Universities' overall performances across 13 disciplines will determine how much each will receive from an annual research grant of HK$2.9 billion. HKU's law faculty had 56 researchers joining the assessment, compared to 26 from Chinese University. Only 9 per cent of the faculty's submissions gained four stars, the highest score that meant they had reached "world-leading" level, while 37 per cent gained three stars, meaning "internationally outstanding". This compared to 15 per cent of research submitted by Chinese University's law faculty that gained four stars; 49 per cent earned three stars. But if each researcher had submitted four items, HKU's law faculty would have 103 pieces of work with three or four stars, while Chinese University's would have just 66. Overall, the University of Science and Technology had the best performance, scoring the highest percentage of three and four stars in most disciplines. HKU and Chinese University were ranked second and third, respectively.