As the 1997 handover of Hong Kong approached, many individuals expressed apprehension as to the future of academic institutions in China's new Special Administrative Region. Despite recent well-publicized developments relating to academic freedom in the Special Administrative Region, in many respects the past three years have seen substantial and still-continuing academic progress. Since the early 1990s the University of Hong Kong has developed into one of Asia's major centres of international affairs. Besides providing both undergraduate and graduate opportunities for study, the University has undertaken several major research initiatives. Increasingly, it serves as a center of scholarship in international studies for China and the surrounding region. These efforts are underpinned by what is probably the most impressive collection of library and archival resources on international relations in all of Asia, the product of the Library's long-term strategy of building up its research holdings. The University now bids fair to make itself into one of Asia's premier centres of international studies, an enterprise which has intensified rather than diminished since 1997. This is the product of interlocking efforts by the Departments of History and of Politics and Public Administration and the Centres of Asian Studies and of American Studies. It is hoped that in the near future these will bear fruit in the formal establishment of an area of focus in international studies.

For many years the University of Hong Kong has offered undergraduate teaching and degrees by thesis in the broad area of international relations. Since the mid-1990s the University has established extremely popular undergraduate programmes in both American Studies and European Studies, enrollments in both of which have grown dramatically over the past few years. Increasingly, a number of Hong Kong undergraduates are choosing to spend part of their course of study outside Hong Kong, in a variety of institutions around the world, while visiting undergraduates from those institutions are spending study time in Hong Kong. In the past ten years, not only Hong Kong students, but also a growing number from overseas, particularly but by no means exclusively from the Chinese mainland, are choosing graduate study at the University of Hong Kong, completing master's and doctoral degrees whose major component is a research thesis. Topics studied run the gamut from the United States media reaction to China in the period 1985-1985, through the diplomacy of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, to Southern women and British film. Ten years ago virtually no postgraduate students were working in these areas; the University of Hong Kong is now a recognized regional centre of study for every aspect of international studies. Postgraduate students can also choose from a variety of taught Master's programmes in Comparative Asian Studies, Chinese Historical Studies, Literary Studies, and Cultural Studies.

Responding to student demand, in September 2000 the Department of Politics and Public Administration plans to introduce a master's degree in International and Public Affairs within the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Hong Kong. Supported by other HKU faculties and partner universities in mainland China, the United States, France, and Australia, the MIPA provides conceptual knowledge as well as in-depth understanding of regional and global affairs, which are needed to meet the career challenge of globalization and dynamic international changes in today's complex world. With special reference to the Asia-Pacific region, the MIPA is the first postgraduate taught course programme in international affairs offered by a locally based institution of higher learning in Hong Kong.

Combining international relations, public administration, law, and business into one programme, the MIPA serves the needs of mainly two groups of candidates: mid-career professionals, including government officials, journalists, multinational corporations executives, and diplomats who have extensive practical experiences and would benefit from some intensive studies and professional interaction in an academic environment for career development or more advanced academic studies; degree holders in relevant social sciences and humanities who want to further specialize in international relations for future career development or prepare for more advanced research work.

Since 1996, the Centre of American Studies has also introduced two pioneering programmes for mainland Chinese postgraduate students. In the past two years it has obtained funding from the Ford Foundation to bring in entire classes of M.A. students in international relations and American studies, from both Fudan University and Peking University, to spend several weeks at the University of Hong Kong doing research for their theses in our extensive library holdings. The Starr Foundation has also funded a total of eight one-year visiting studentships, which enable mainland postgraduate students registered for their Ph.D. degree in some area of American studies in their own institutions to spend twelve months at the University of Hong Kong. Participating students have come from most of the leading mainland institutions, including Peking University, the Beijing Foreign Studies University, Nanjing University, the Guangdong Foreign Studies University, and the Foreign Affairs College, Beijing. Their topics of study include Sino-American relations, the relationship of Hong Kong to Chinese and American foreign policy, American ethnic relations, and American film, among others. These programmes have not only benefited the individual students and their institutions, but have notably enhanced the University of Hong Kong's existing exchange relationships with the partner institutions. Throughout China, the University is now recognized as a leader in American studies and international studies. These pioneering programmes demonstrate the potential for the University of Hong Kong to play a central role in the development of international studies in mainland institutions, which must be one of its long-term objectives.

Such programmes are only part of a broad range of exchanges with mainland institutions. In the past four years the Centre of American Studies has raised funds to host over fifty visiting mainland scholars and postgraduate students. While some have been here on short visits, thanks to the generosity of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, the Ford Foundation, and the Starr Foundation, increasingly funds are available to support such visitors for relatively lengthy stays, of between three months and a year. At the present time there are no less than eight such scholars and students in the University of Hong Kong, attached to the Centre of American Studies and housed in the Department of History. Drawn from all the major mainland Chinese institutions in American studies, working in a variety of different areas of American studies, and ranging from junior graduate students to very senior faculty, they demonstrate the possibilities for the University of Hong Kong to serve as an intellectual focus of American studies for the entire region. These scholars are drawn to the University of Hong Kong not only by the steadily increasing excellence of its library resources for research, but also by the presence in Hong Kong of specialists in their particular areas, be that literature, film, culture, economics, politics, history, or international relations. Their shared Hong Kong experience is also developing a sense of intellectual camaraderie among the group of Chinese Americanists from different institutions within China.

The long-term impact of these programmes on mainland institutions is incalculable, but is likely to be great. Fudan University's ten visiting graduate students, for example, not only handed in substantially higher quality dissertations, but were exposed to the experience of working in a first-rate and thoroughly modern university library. In the long term, these various visiting fellowships are greatly enhancing not just individuals' personal research projects, but also the entire discipline of American studies in mainland China. Two scholars, Ms. Zhou Jingqiong of Guangdong Foreign Studies University and Prof. Wang Enming of Shanghai International Studies University, have received fellowships to work on American studies textbooks specifically designed for Chinese students. Most such scholars use their time in Hong Kong not only to pursue research projects but also to collect materials which will enhance teaching in their own departments. Mr. Teng Jimeng of Beijing Foreign Studies University, for example, spent much of his time in Hong Kong preparing new courses which he would teach on returning to his own university's Centre of American Studies. Besides pursuing their own research, Prof. Wang Li-cheng of Fudan University and Prof. Qu Yun of Northeast Normal University undertook similar tasks for their own university; indeed, thanks to materials which he passed on to them two of Prof. Qu's undergraduate students came first and second in a national essay contest on Sino-American relations. Prof. Zhang Chong of Nanjing University completed one volume of a state-sponsored history of American literature during his Hong Kong fellowship. Prof. Tao Wenzhao is currently working on the third and final volume of his history of twentieth-century Sino-American relations. Visiting Chinese scholars and graduate students will return to their own institutions with strong links with Hong Kong, which are likely to affect their entire careers in numerous ways.

The University of Hong Kong has a global network of exchange relationships with prestigious institutions around the world. The University of Hong Kong has established exchange relationships with a number of Chinese institutions, including the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Fudan University, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Nanjing University, South East University, the University of Science and Technology of China, Sichuan Union University, Wuhan University, and Xi'an Jiaotong University. Since the late 1980s, Americanists at the University of Hong Kong have developed a particularly close relationship with the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and we also have excellent relations with Centres of American Studies and/or International Relations at Sichuan University, the Guangzhou Foreign Studies University, the Beijing Foreign Studies University, the Foreign Affairs College, Beijing, Peking University, Fudan University, Nanjing University, and Northeast Normal University. Several mainland-born research associate professors, young scholars who have recently completed their doctoral degrees, have been appointed in various areas of international studies, among them an international relations specialist in the Department of Politics and Public Administration. Hong Kong University academics in international studies have paid visits to institutions and attended conferences in Sichuan, Beijing, Nanjing, Guangzhou, and elsewhere, to meet their counterparts and exchange information with them, and have also sponsored short visits by numerous Chinese Americanists, many of whom have also attended the various conferences, to this institution. For many years those involved in American Studies have also organized substantial book donations, sometimes more than a ton at one time, to institutions in China, including the Beijing Foreign Studies University; the Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing; Sichuan Union University; Nanjing University; and the Guangzhou Foreign Studies University.

Such links are only part of the network of ties which bind international studies in the University of Hong Kong to the surrounding region and beyond. The University of Hong Kong is the only Hong Kong academic institution to be a founding member of Universitas 21, an association of eighteen leading research universities from North America, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, China, and Singapore, established in March 1997 to work towards common academic goals. The Centre of Asian Studies has for many years hosted leading scholars from around the world; Prof. Ezra Vogel of Harvard University, for example, is currently in residence. Contacts with Southeast Asian institutions and with such leading Taiwan centres as Tamkang University and the Academia Sinica are deepening. The Director and several members of the Centre of Asian Studies have already visited various research centres in India. In addition, the Department of History and the American Studies Programme have excellent relationships with institutions in Britain and the United States, among them the University of Kansas, the College of William and Mary, Keele University, and the University of Birmingham. The Department of History also instituted the exchange programme with the St. Petersburg Pedagogical University, which has now been taken over by the University of Hong Kong's central administration. University of Hong Kong academics regularly attend and present papers at international conferences, and are well represented on the boards of international academic organizations. In summer 2001 the University will host the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, and in the past decade it has organized meetings of both the International Association of Historians of Asia and the International Congress of Asian and North African Studies. Close to home, academics in international studies at the University of Hong Kong also have ties with their counterparts at other Hong Kong institutions, and there is much potential for the university to play a leading role in developing international studies throughout the SAR as a whole.

Various centres and departments are, moreover, involved in several interlocking initiatives designed to enable the University of Hong Kong to realize its cross-cultural potential to serve as a leading regional centre of research and scholarship, providing both established and younger academics and others from China, Asia, and the West to meet, come to appreciate each other's perspectives, and engage in mutually beneficial dialogue and cross-fertilization. These initiatives include several projects spearheaded by the Centre of Asian Studies: the China-ASEAN Project, established in 1997; the new Sino-Indian and Taiwan studies enterprises; and the establishment of Media Studies. They also include a growing collaborative association with the Cold War International History Project, with which the University has already mounted two highly successful and ground-breaking conferences. In the long term, University of Hong Kong teachers and researchers from the Centres of Asian and American Studies and the Departments of History and Politics and Public Administration are developing proposals to establish an Asian centre of this project at the University.

Cold War International History Project

One of the most productive trans-national efforts in which the University has become involved is that of Cold War studies. The Centre of Asian Studies, the Centre of American Studies, the Department of History, and the Department of Politics and Public Administration are in the process of building up a long-term collaborative relationship with the internationally recognized Cold War International History Project. This project, established in 1991, has been in the forefront of moves to open archival materials in the former Communist countries and to bring scholars from those countries into the mainstream of international scholarship. The recent and acclaimed, if sometimes controversial, 24-part CNN television series, The Cold War, drew heavily upon the findings of this project.

Six years ago, when the CWIHP sought an Asian partner for a conference, and potentially for a longer-term relationship, it turned to the University of Hong Kong, specifically to the Department of History and the Centre of American Studies, which had already developed excellent connections with Americanists in the PRC. An earlier University of Hong Kong conference on Sino-American relations, in January 1990, had marked the first occasion on which a substantial number of Chinese Americanists, fifteen in all, attended or presented papers at a Hong Kong conference. Its proceedings were later published as Sino-American Relations Since 1900 (Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1990).

The first collaborative conference, “New Evidence on the Cold War in Asia,” held in January 1996, was the first major international gathering outside China at which large numbers of Chinese scholars met and debated at length with their foreign counterparts on issues of Cold War history. It resulted in the first volume in the CWIHP's own series of books, Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, ed. Odd Arne Westad (Smithsonian Institution Press and Stanford University Press, 1998), the most significant work on Sino-Soviet relations published in the 1990s. At the second conference, “New Evidence on China, Southeast Asia, and the Vietnam War,” which took place at the University of Hong Kong in January 2000, and included Chinese, Vietnamese, and Western scholars, the standard of Chinese archival evidence was dramatically better than four years earlier, while the discussions at the conference itself were outstanding. The conference organizers expect to publish another book, which will be another landmark work of scholarship on the Cold War in Asia.

In the longer term, the University of Hong Kong and the CWIHP also hope to establish an Asian centre of cold war studies at the University of Hong Kong. This will build on the University's interstitial position between China and the West, the success of the past conferences, the presence at the University of several well-qualified specialists in this area, the University's outstanding library resources, the Centre of Asian Studies' China-ASEAN, Sino-Indian, and Taiwan Studies initiatives, and the University's strong and growing links with scholars in China, to establish the University of Hong Kong as a major regional centre of scholarship, research, and innovation on the Cold War. The Centre of American Studies has already provided visitorships to various mainland specialists in the broad area of Cold War studies. Other grant proposals to facilitate aspects of this venture are currently under consideration or development.

China-ASEAN Project and China-India Initiative

In 1997 the Centre of Asian Studies established a China-ASEAN Project, which has made pleasing progress. The Centre has taken as a major task the building of links between scholars in China and the ASEAN states, as a means to open up further dialogue channels and promote greater understanding between the two regions. In this sphere, the Project has done much work. Delegations from the Centre have visited the major strategic studies, Asian studies, policy studies, and economics research institutes in most of the ASEAN states, as well as those in China. During their visits to these institutes, they learned about the research being conducted and publicized the Centre's own research projects. The links with these various institutes are being strengthened. To increase the Centre's profile and develop further links, a number of members attended the Triennial Meeting of the Chinese Association of Southeast Asian Studies, held at Hainan in November 1997. This was the first time that Hong Kong participants had been permitted to participate in such a conference. Project members also attended the 1999 Triennial Meeting held in Guangzhou. The information gained from the visits to and links with these respective institutes has been compiled and is now being updated and will be published as a guide to China-ASEAN research institutes.

In addition, a Roundtable of the directors of thirty-five of these Institutes was held at the University of Hong Kong in May 1998. This brought together people who had previously not had the opportunity to meet, which prompted much interchange between Chinese and ASEAN scholars and government officials. All sides agreed on the value of continuing such interchanges. The 1999 Roundtable of these institutes was held at the University of Hong Kong in October 1999 and focused on China-ASEAN economic links. In January 1999 two members of the Project were invited to participate in the inaugural ASEAN-China Economic and Trade Seminar held in Beijing under the auspices of China's Ministry of Economic Trade and Economic Co-operation. They were the only Hong Kong representatives invited to this important new forum.

The Centre is now producing a bi-annual China-ASEAN Review, a regular journal which will record and monitor the changing links between China and the states of ASEAN and provide analysis of these changes. Necessary monitoring systems have been established and databases are being built up. In addition, the China-ASEAN Project has established a publication series which will bring out works of relevance to Chinese-Southeast Asian relations. The first two works in this series have just appeared: (i) a volume of classical Chinese references to Thailand, which was compiled by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies within Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, China; and (ii) five volumes comprising the collected works of the late Professor Han Zhen-hua, one of China's foremost experts on historical links between China and Southeast Asia, as well as on the South China Sea.

The Centre's expertise in Southeast Asia allowed it to bid in 1998 for a contract to provide the Hong Kong government's Central Policy Unit with quarterly reports on economic, social and political trends in Southeast Asia. The award of this contract has required the Project further to expand its staff and skills.

So, too, has another initiative, the move to develop a parallel China-India Project. In 1999, at the invitation of the Government of India, a delegation from the Centre of Asian Studies travelled to India to meet with a wide range of officials, scholars, and trade and business representatives. The discussions held with these diverse groups mainly concentrated on China-related studies and connections in India. A common complaint heard from all the institutions visited was that there was insufficient information available as to what was happening in China in the particular area being discussed. The discussions held with these diverse groups mainly concentrated on China-related studies and connections in India. A common complaint heard from all of the institutions visited was that there was insufficient information available as to what was happening in China in the particular area being discussed. Likewise, having returned to Hong Kong and discussed similar issues with scholars and policy-makers from the Mainland, a similar complaint was heard — that there is too little information available in China as to the social, economic, and political situations in India. In addition, it became increasingly obvious that many of the issues which are being tackled by the respective governments, businesses, and academic researchers in each country closely resemble each other. In May 2000 the Centre of Asian Studies therefore plans to convene a major China-India conference. Its objective is to bring together scholars, policy-makers, and business people from India and China to examine and discuss some of the major issues facing their own countries, and to discover how their counterparts deal with such issues in their country.

An initiative which is still under development is the development of Taiwan studies in the University of Hong Kong, and the establishment of closer links with Taiwan institutions. This will obviously complement the first two projects, enhancing the University's interstitial role within Asia.

In addition, the Centre of Asian Studies has played a major part in the establishment of a Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong. This was founded in September 1999, to build bridges between the academy and the media industry, both international and local media. It connects journalists from East and West, bringing together colleagues of diverse background to explore common concerns: technological revolution, media ethics, newsroom management, press freedom, access to information, and the need for Asian voices in the global media. For international journalists, the Centre offers a home where visitors meet with local colleagues and gain unparalleled access to the region through a growing network of professional and academic exchanges.

Library Facilities

Underpinning all these other developments, the past decade has seen a major enhancement of Hong Kong library resources for research in international studies, particularly at this university, which now has extremely extensive holdings of documentary and archival materials for research on British and British and American political and diplomatic history, particularly in the context of the Asia-Pacific region, and is embarking on a systematic programme to enhance both these and its other library holdings in international studies. In 1997 the library received a substantial Research Grants Council award to purchase a complete run of the United States Congressional hearings, something which no other library in Asia possesses. The University Library is also a European Documentation Centre, receiving all the documents published by the European Union. Hong Kong institutions' holdings of Chinese-language materials are outstanding, and probably nowhere else in the world can one find such a combination of excellent Western and Asian-language library resources. Certainly, neither in Hong Kong nor in China or Southeast Asia is there any institution whose library holdings on international relations, history, diplomacy, literature, or cultural studies affairs even begin to approach those in Hong Kong, which are undergoing continuous enhancement, not only through additional printed and microfilm materials but increasingly by the acquisition of computer capabilities and computerized materials. Indeed, a first-year University of Hong Kong undergraduate routinely has access to resources for study, scholarship, and research, both in Western languages and in Chinese and other Asian languages, which far surpass those available even to senior academics at any mainland Chinese university.

In an effort to bring more closely together all these interlocking developments, several academics involved are developing plans to establish a formal area of focus in international studies at the University of Hong Kong. In a globalized world, China and the West have ever more dealings with each other, as do China and other Asian countries. Hong Kong can take a central role in mediating this relationship, and is likely to play an important part in the development of the mainland's understanding of the West and the rest of Asia. For the University of Hong Kong, the 1997 handover has in many ways provided a unique opportunity to participate in the mainland's academic regeneration and revitalization, a stimulating prospect for 2000 and beyond.

Further information on the University of Hong Kong can be found at its website: www.hku.hk.

Priscilla Roberts

E-mail: proberts@hkucc.hku.hk