Today we celebrate a historic moment in the life of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

　　Professor Lawrence J. Lau is about to be installed as our sixth Vice-Chancellor. Professor Lawrence Lau is an economist of high stature in the world of learning: a distinguished researcher and director of research; an adviser to governments, universities and foundations; a scholar with a profound understanding of the economies of the East Asian region. He is a man of educational wisdom and vision. Drawing on the rich traditions and achievements of the Chinese University and his own experience at some of the world's foremost universities, Professor Lau has mapped out a clear path for the University to follow into its fifth decade. While being faithful to its Hong Kong origins and base, he wants the Chinese University "to become a great Asian university of international standing".

　　Born in China, Professor Lau did his schooling in Hong Kong before leaving for Stanford University, where in 1964 he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Physics and Economics with Great Distinction. He took his postgraduate education at the University of California at Berkeley, completing his MA in 1966 and his PhD in 1969. Meanwhile he had joined the faculty of his alma mater, Stanford, where he became a full Professor of Economics in 1976. In 1992, he had the honour of being named the first Kwoh-Ting Li Professor of Economic Development at Stanford. At the same time, he served as Co-Director of Stanford's Asia/Pacific Research Center and later as Director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. During a highly distinguished research career mainly in the fields of economic development, economic growth and the economies of East Asia, including China, he authored or edited five books and published more than 160 refereed papers. In 1966 he developed one of the first econometric models of China, which he has continued to revise and update ever since. He is one of the first economists to analyze and to understand the so-called East Asian economic miracle of the late twentieth century.

　　In the few short months since he has joined The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Professor Lau has taken every opportunity to outline his educational philosophy and his vision for the future. Of fundamental importance to Professor Lau is a belief that a great university is not simply a place that produces and transmits knowledge to its students, crucial as these functions are. A great university must teach its students to ask questions, to formulate and to solve problems, to take an inquiring and critical attitude towards received ideas - in short, it must be a place where students learn to think for themselves. As he said to our freshmen at the Inauguration Ceremony on September 1 of this year: "This is the best thing the University can offer you - not just a degree or a diploma, but a capacity for life-long self-learning."

　　What lies behind this belief is Professor Lau's understanding of the rapidly changing world into which our graduates will be moving. It will be a world in which knowledge will be the basis of the economy, yet the skills and knowledge students acquire at university may become quickly out of date. Those who flourish in this world of accelerating change will be those who can adapt and renew their knowledge - in other words, those who have been taught to teach themselves. The effective, versatile and employable people of the future will be those who have learned how to think - critically, independently and creatively. For these reasons, Professor Lau also strongly supports the broadening of the Hong Kong secondary education system which will stimulate students to become active and independent learners before they enter university.

　　For Professor Lau, a great university must do more than produce employable graduates for the local, national and international economies. Its education should offer to transform the whole person, helping each student to realize his or her potential. Here Professor Lau sees the critical role of our distinctive collegiate system, which nurtures the growth of character, a sense of standards and values and important social skills. Likewise he is conscious of the vital potential of our long-established general education programme, which should enable students to develop broad interests, passions and knowledge outside their specialized areas of study. A great university is distinguished by its well-educated graduates - people with lively interests and who are well informed - those with breadth as well as depth of understanding.

　　At the heart of Professor Lau's vision for the future is internationalization, what he calls "education without borders". The Chinese University can only become truly international, he believes, if two things happen. The first is that it should attract many more quality students from the mainland and beyond. He would like to see ours as a truly multinational and multicultural campus with eventually 20 or 25 per cent of the student body from outside Hong Kong. This would bring great intellectual stimulus and cultural enrichment to our Hong Kong students, who would be much better prepared to enter into the city's international business, technological and cultural life. The second thing Professor Lau wants to happen is a significant expansion of the University's exchange and study abroad programmes. Even a brief period of overseas study can broaden a student's horizons in ways that can be life-transforming.

　　Central to Professor Lau's vision are research and scholarship, which are at the heart of a great university of international standing. Here too his ambitions for this University are high. In recent years, the Chinese University has become the premier research institution in Hong Kong measured in terms of externally-funded research income and research output. For Professor Lau, this leadership has to be consolidated and to grow, not least because, as he knows from his own experience, a great international teaching university has to be a great research university.

　　During his own career, Professor Lau has been recognized for his distinguished research by many bodies of higher learning. He is an elected member of Phi Beta Kappa, a member of Tau Beta Pi, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and an Academician of Academia Sinica. He has been a Member of the Conference for Research in Income and Wealth, an Overseas Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, an Honorary Member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and an Academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate of Social Sciences by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has been a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow and a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences.

　　Professor Lau is active in many national academic and professional bodies. He is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences; an Honorary Professor of the Institute of Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences; an Honorary Professor of Jilin, Nanjing, Tsinghua and Shantou universities, the People's University and Southeast University. He is an International Adviser to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics and a member of the Board of Directors of the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange in Taipei.

　　Over a century ago a famous British statesman (Benjamin Disraeli) said: "Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends." If anything, this statement is even more relevant today to the future of the people of this Special Administrative Region - a community whose only resources are intelligence, hard work and ingenuity. Professor Lau's vision is to help build that future by making The Chinese University of Hong Kong one of the leading seats of learning in Asia, both in research and in education across a comprehensive range of disciplines. It is an important vision for Hong Kong, China and the region as a whole. The whole University community - teachers, administrators, students and alumni alike - looks forward with great confidence and expectation to its fifth decade under the leadership of Professor Lawrence J. Lau. It is now our privilege to witness his installation as Vice-Chancellor of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.