University of Hong Kong

The University of Hong Kong (often abbreviated as HKU, informally known as Hong Kong University) is a public research university located in Pokfulam, Hong Kong, founded in 1911 during the British Colonial era.

 It is the oldest tertiary institution in Hong Kong, originally established to compete with other Great Powers that had opened higher learning institutions in China at the beginning of the twentieth century.

 The Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, established in 1887, evolved to be the medical faculty, one of its first three faculties alongside Arts and Engineering.

 Academic life at the university was disrupted by the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong; however, following the end of the Second World War, the university underwent expansion with the founding of further departments and faculties.

Today, HKU is organised into 10 academic faculties with English as the main language of instruction. It exhibits strength in scholarly research and education of humanities, law, political sciences, and biomedicine, and is the first team in the world which successfully isolated the corona virus, the causative agent of SARS

. It is ranked among the top 3 Asian universities by QS and THE (main overall results).

The University of Hong Kong was founded in 1911 when Governor Sir Frederick Lugard proposed to establish a university in Hong Kong to compete with the other Great Powers opening universities in China, most notably Prussia, which had just opened Tongji University in Shanghai. 

The colonial Hong Kongers shared British values and allowed Britain to expand its influence in southern China and consolidate its rule in Hong Kong.[citation needed] Indian businessman Sir Hormusjee Naorojee Mody learned of Lugard's plan and pledged to donate HK$150,000 towards the construction and HK$30,000 towards other costs. The Hong Kong Government and the business

sector in southern China, which were both equally eager to learn "secrets of the West's success" (referring to technological advances made since the Industrial Revolution), also gave their support. The government contributed a site at West Point; Swire Group also contributed £40,000 to endow a chair in Engineering, and thousands of dollars in equipment.

 The aim was partly to bolster its corporate image following the death of a passenger on board one of its ships, Fatshan, and the subsequent unrest stirred by the Self-Government Society.

Along with other donors including the British government and companies such as HSBC, Lugard finally had enough to fund the building of the university.

Charles Eliot was appointed its first Vice-Chancellor. As Governor of Hong Kong, Lugard laid the foundation stone of the Main Building on 16 March 1910 and hoped that the university would educate more Chinese people in British "imperial values", as opposed to those of other Western powers.

[citation needed] The university was incorporated in Hong Kong as a self-governing body of scholars on 30 March 1911 and had its official opening ceremony on 11 March 1912.The university was founded as an all-male institution. Women students were admitted for the first time only ten years later

As Lugard felt that the Chinese society at the time was not suited to ideals such as communism, the university originally emulated the University of Manchester in emphasising the sciences over the humanities.[citation needed] It opened with three founding faculties, Arts, Engineering and Medicine

 The Faculty of Medicine was founded as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese by the London Missionary Society in 1887. Of the College's early alumni, the most renowned was Sun Yat-sen, who led the Chinese Revolution,

 changed China from an empire to a republic. In December 1916, the university held its first congregation, with 23 graduates and five honorary graduates.