Reorganizing the Council of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (“CUHK”) is necessary, urgent and legitimate. The Legislative Council (“LegCo”) passed The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Amendment) Bill 2023 on the third reading on November 1, which is an important step towards improving the university’s governance and enhancing its efficiency of governance.

Governance at CUHK has deep-seated shortcomings and needs reform urgently

As one of the universities funded by the University Grants Committee (“UGC”), CUHK should be subject to the supervision of the Government and the public. As early as in 2002, UGC issued a report clearly proposing that Hong Kong’s funded universities needed to reorganize their management and governance structures to enhance public accountability and supervision. The content of reorganization mainly included that there should be more external members than internal members, i.e., salaried staff or students, in their councils.

Currently, of the eight UGC-funded universities, except for CUHK, the remaining seven have reorganized their councils. Although CUHK has made two attempts to reorganize its council by launching its 2009 proposal and 2016 proposal, both failed to come to fruition. As a result, more than half (i.e., 28 seats) of the 55 seats in the CUHK Council today are filled by salaried faculty members, which is an unsatisfactory governance structure.

CUHK’s delay in governance reform has resulted in redundancy in its council and a lack of supervision, which is a step backward due to failure to make progress. During the violent protests, CUHK did not hold any council meetings for a long time and was unable to respond to the situation promptly. The changing of the CUHK emblem incident in October last year also showed up the inadequacies of the university’s management procedures as the related expenses were not approved by the CUHK Council.

In addition, the president of CUHK did not attend any of the three meetings held by the Bill Committee with CUHK and government authorities. Such details reflect the indisputable fact that there are problems in the management of CUHK. For the development of CUHK, legislation must be amended as soon as possible to improve its governance.

Legislation amendment is open, transparent, legal and reasonable

The CUHK Council has been fully aware of the relevant amendments. In December last year, three legislators presented the content of the Bill to the CUHK Council. On that day, the CUHK Council established a taskforce to undertake further consultation and study. In April this year, the CUHK Council endorsed the report submitted by the taskforce and concluded that the 2016 proposal was 80% similar to the LegCo members’ proposal. The CUHK Council has discussed the proposed amendments presented by the legislators at no less than four meetings and received no objections. This completely contradicted the accusation, made in the petition signed by over 1,500 CUHK alumni, that the three legislators “submitted the Bill to the LegCo without consulting others.” In addition, the Chairman, Vice-Chairman and some members of the CUHK Council expressed their welcome to the legislators’ push for reorganization and their support for the Bill.

The Bill proposes amending the number of seats in the CUHK Council from 55 to 34, with 23 being filled by external members and 11 by internal members, which is in line with the ratio between the number of internal and external members of the councils of most UGC-funded institutions. The main difference between the relevant recommendations of the Bill and the taskforce’s report is the number of seats for LegCo members in the CUHK Council. The taskforce recommended considering streamlining the number seats, which at present is three. In my view, the number of seats for LegCo members should not be reduced as they represent the public in monitoring the governance of CUHK. At the same time, in view of the great powers and responsibilities of the president of the university, it is appropriate and reasonable to raise the appointment threshold to require the support of three-quarters of the council’s members.

Reorganization follows procedures and does not hinder autonomy of institutions

In my view, the Bill tabled by the legislators has procedural legitimacy as it received the written consent of the Chief Executive in June this year. The private member’s bill introduced by the legislators does not overstep the line, but pushes for the long-overdue reorganization of the CUHK Council when the Government is unable to prioritize the reform of CUHK.

I hope that the CUHK Council would use this as a starting point to effectively improve CUHK’s governance, accountability and transparency to rebuild public confidence in the university.

This is a free translation. For the exact meaning of the article, please refer to the Chinese version.