It can be hard to get into the University of Hong Kong these days. Physically hard. Two of the entrances from the local subway station were shuttered last week – due to “vandalism”, according to a station notice. Most visitors travelled up an escalator, then up in a lift and along a passageway to the steep hillside campus where two security guards were checking staff and student passes.
The highly-ranked university, like every publicly-funded university in Hong Kong, has introduced stringent access security in response to the widespread and sometimes violent protests that first erupted last June in China’s tiny enclave of academic freedom.
The highly-ranked university, like every publicly-funded university in Hong Kong, has introduced stringent access security in response to the widespread and sometimes violent protests that first erupted last June in China’s tiny enclave of academic freedom.
highly-ranked university, like every publicly-funded university in Hong Kong, has introduced stringent access security in response to the widespread and sometimes violent protests that first erupted last June in China’s tiny enclave of academic freedom.
highly-ranked university, like every publicly-funded university in Hong Kong, has introduced stringent access security in response to the widespread and sometimes violent protests that first erupted last June in China’s tiny enclave of academic freedom.
The residue of the protests remained at HKU: furious painted signs yet to be removed, a broken railing and a scattering of broken glass near an entrance.
Yet the move to ramp up security has prompted misgivings. Philosophical questions have been asked about whether university campuses should be open to the public in the spirit of intellectual freedom. There has been grumbling, even from students who oppose the protests.
“We had groups of young people, dressed in black anddonning masks, coming into the campus and drawing graffiti protestslogans on the walls and floor,” he says one 24-year-old student, working on a master’s degree in social science at HKU. “No one, including the security, stoppedthem. But in the long term, if the university is to remain an opencampus, then this is not the way.”
Hong Kong has been galvanised by the current round of protests, which began in opposition to an inflammatory extradition bill and continue to sporadically explode into life.
Over recent months, marches have drawn as many as two million people (from a population of 7.4 million). Banks and subway stations have been smashed and China-leaning retail outlets trashed. Hundreds of protesters have been arrested, a handful shot, a few have died.
Hong Kong has eight publicly-funded universities, and at least six of them have felt the protest fire. Facilities were broken into, slogans sprayed on walls, and roads blocked. The campus protests culminated in a dramatic 13-day siege at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in November.
The Hong Kong government, which protesters believe does Beijing’s bidding, late last year shelved HK$1.4 billion (.26 billion) in funding for at least three large university infrastructure projects at different campuses, a move seen as retribution for university authorities’ perceived laxness in controlling their rioting students.
Many academics fear future cuts and increased restrictions. Dr King-wa Fu, an associate professor at HKU’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre, says the fall-out from the protests was “likely” to affect university funding.
“I expect the government and the pro-establishment political parties will use all kinds of excuses to make the university funding difficult,” he says. “For example, setting up different conditions or procedures to signal that the universities are not really ‘independent’ but should follow the government’s direction.”
Over and above ongoing funding and support for new infrastructure projects, the public universities are likely to need some kind of financial bailout for repairs to protest damage. The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), for one, estimates repair work will cost at least HK$70 million ($13.1 million) including the replacement of 75 university vehicles. City University (CityU) estimates it will have to foot an even higher repair bill.
In the meantime, Hong Kong’s battered universities have taken steps to prevent further damage. Students returning to campuses in recent days for the start of a new semester found a variety of security measures in place, from turnstiles and card-readers to security guards. Student and staff movements can now presumably be monitored.
“The campus access control will be retained from the beginning of this second term until further notice,” a CUHK spokesperson says. “The university will review the level of security measures in line with risk assessment of the prevailing situation”.
Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), too, now requires “all students and colleagues entering the campus … to show or scan their student or staff cards, while visitors entering campus need to register, and have their identity and purpose of visit verified by their HKBU hosts”.
One fourth-year HKBU student says she is suspicious of the action. The university has never had those sorts of checkpoints in the past, the Hong Kong–born 21-year-old says, and the increased security would not necessarily prevent violence because attacks could always happen just outside university gates.
“I think it’s more like tracking students,” she says. “They will have records of who comes in, and when they come and when they leave.”
Led by Hong Kong’s young, including university and school students, the Hong Kong protests have been fuelled by China’s steady encroachment on civil liberties, by the shortage of housing and by the perceived loss of jobs to “mainlanders”.
Although there is widespread support for the movement, some students question whether the violence and material damage associated with the protests is justified. The HKU social science student says the protesters haven’t achieved anything, and haven’t even won sympathy for the cause from the public.
“Protesters defendviolent protests saying that no one knows if protests can work untilthey try it,” the Hong Kong local says. “If that’s so, then political analysts and anyone in theactuarial industry can pack their bags because apparently makingeducated estimates is not a thing.”
Crowds of mainland and foreign students enrolled at Hong Kong universities fled last year when the protests hit campuses, and the reputation of Hong Kong’s internationally prestigious universities may be permanently affected.
Ranking 35 in the world according to the current Times Higher Education rankings, HKU has a stellar academic reputation. According to the same table, CUHK has a ranking of 57. By comparison, the University of Sydney has a ranking of 60 and the Australian National University 50.
Foreign students, including Australians, have long flocked to Hong Kong to study and numbers have increased over the past five years to just over 18,000 in 2018-19. Many believe those days are numbered.
HKU’s Dr Fu thinks the appeal of Hong Kong’s universities will remain “profoundly” affected by the negative publicity of the protests, at least over the short term.
“The general impression is that Hong Kong may no longer be a safe place any more especially on the university campuses,” he says. “Every time videos of police violence and use of teargas are circulated in the media, it reinforces people’s general impression, even though most of the places in Hong Kong are indeed peaceful and safe. I believe many foreign students, especially mainland students, may choose to study somewhere else.”
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