Focus on your studies: Shue Yan University co-founder’s words of advice as localism takes hold on Hong Kong campuses

Support for localism may be on the rise in university campuses and students are getting more involved in social and political issues, but the nonagenarian founder of one of the city’s tertiary institutions has a piece of advice: focus on knowledge and studies.

The 96-year-old Dr Henry Hu Hung-lick, founder of Shue Yan College in 1971 and a university since 2006, said: “I think young people today should not harbour any thoughts beyond ‘one country, two systems’ to create what could be ‘one country, three systems’,” he said without elaborating, except adding that Deng Xiaoping’s promise of 50 years no change for Hong Kong “has been met and successful”.

He advised “students should focus on knowledge and studies. That I think is the most important for them”.

Hu reflected on his actions in the 1970s when he was an international law barrister and defended student activists arrested for public protests over the disputed Diaoyu Islands, which Japan calls the Senkaku Islands.

“I wanted to protect the students so that they wouldn’t get harmed. The charge could affect the rest of their life, you know,” Hu recalled, referring to the “unlawful assembly” charge the colonial government threatened the students with after a protest in Victoria Park on July 7, 1971, in the wake of the islands being placed under Japanese rule.

“They were young and patriotic, and very good students too. Some of them now teach at the University of Hong Kong and Chinese University. I may not go to heaven, but I’m glad to see that in my life time.”