Before the Beginning: The Founding and Naming of HKUST

HKUST is often called Hong Kong's "third university." Behind that label lies a story of Hong Kong's rapid economic transformation in the 1980s, which in turn catalysed an expansion of higher education. This article traces the full prehistory of HKUST before its formal opening in 1991: why did Hong Kong need a third university in the 1980s? Who led the planning? Why was Clear Water Bay chosen as the site, and why was it named a "University of Science and Technology" rather than a "Polytechnic"? Just how significant was the Hong Kong Jockey Club's enormous donation, which laid the material foundation for the campus? And what role did the founding Vice-Chancellor, Chia-Wei Woo, play? This piece can be read alongside the University Chronology^※; here, we delve into the deeper questions of why it was built, by whom, with what resources, and under what name.

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# 1. The Backdrop: A Service Economy Calls for a "Third University"

During the 1970s and 1980s, Hong Kong's economy underwent a swift transformation, upgrading from traditional, labour-intensive manufacturing to a service and knowledge-based model. At the time, Hong Kong had only two government-funded universities: The University of Hong Kong (established 1911) and The Chinese University of Hong Kong (established 1963). According to an account by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust^※, by the late 1980s, a widely shared expectation had taken hold that an increasingly services-based economy would create strong demand for university graduates^※.

Figures such as the Governor, Sir Edward Youde, and Legislative Councillor Sir Sze-Yuen Chung believed that Hong Kong needed a new university with a core focus on science and technology research to underpin the economic transformation and supply a sufficient pool of graduates^※. The government predicted that HKU and CUHK alone could not meet the coming surge in demand for scientific and technical talent. Establishing a distinctly research-oriented polytechnic university would not only fill a gap in higher education provision but also create an internationally recognised brand for Hong Kong scientific research.

One telling detail, often cited: according to Wikipedia^※, HKUST was Hong Kong's first university "to not be created by a predecessor institution"^※. It was not upgraded from an existing post-secondary college. It was a new city raised on open ground, planned holistically from scratch. This fact became the historical starting point for HKUST's spirit of "creating, not replicating."

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# 2. The Planning Process (1986–1991)

# 1986: Formal Approval and the Preparatory Committee

In March 1986, the Hong Kong government formally announced its intention to build a third university, concentrating on science, technology, engineering, and business management^※. In September of that year, the "Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Preparatory Committee" was officially formed^※, chaired by Sir Sze-Yuen Chung. The committee would convene six times, making pivotal decisions on the university's name, campus site, architectural design, academic structure, and administrative framework.

The planning of HKUST cannot be separated from the man the university would later call its "key founder." According to an HKUST memorial statement, Sir Sze-Yuen served as Chairman of the Preparatory Committee during the university's initial stage and, after its establishment, became the first Chairman of the University Council^※ (for his full tenure, see Governance Structure and Successive Leaders (Part 2)^※). The committee took on a series of foundational decisions—site selection, naming, academic and administrative frameworks. As a senior figure in Hong Kong's industrial and public affairs, Sir Sze-Yuen's stature and organisational skill were crucial in securing government backing, community donations, and academic resources for the fledgling university. Earlier, he had also been involved in the push to establish Hong Kong Polytechnic and City Polytechnic, making him a central policy figure in Hong Kong's era of higher education expansion. It is no exaggeration to say that without a heavyweight "key founder" to orchestrate the entire effort, HKUST's ambition to "start from zero and plan holistically" would have been difficult to realise.

# The Naming Process

According to official records, the Preparatory Committee settled on the name "The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology" (HKUST) during the planning period between 1986 and 1988^※. Locals call it "科大," and "UST" is commonly used on campus. The deliberate choice of "Science" over "Polytechnic" signalled its identity as a research university, consciously distinguishing it from the vocational orientation of the then Hong Kong Polytechnic (later upgraded to a university). The full significance of this naming choice is discussed in section five.

# 1987: The Jockey Club Announces an Enormous Donation

In June 1987, the Hong Kong Jockey Club announced a donation of HK$1.5 billion specifically for the construction of the Clear Water Bay campus^※. At the time, it was the largest single educational donation in Hong Kong's history, and it established the financial foundation for the campus's construction (the full context and subsequent impact of this gift are explored in section four). The Jockey Club also later commissioned the Irish sculptors Charles and Joan Walsh-Smith to create the iconic Red Bird sundial sculpture, situated at the entrance plaza of the campus (see University Motto, Emblem, and Campus Symbols^※).

# Siting at Clear Water Bay

HKUST was ultimately sited at Tai Po Tsai, on the Clear Water Bay peninsula in Sai Kung District, New Territories. The location is surrounded by hills on three sides, slopes down to the sea, and faces Tolo Harbour, offering wide views and distinctive natural beauty. The campus occupies some 60 hectares (150 acres) of waterfront land^※. It is less than a 30-minute drive from the urban centre (Tsim Sha Tsui), providing a relatively secluded academic environment while maintaining accessibility to the city. This sea-facing, sloped site, remote from the city and available for comprehensive planning, allowed HKUST to design a campus layout from scratch tailored to the needs of a research university (its hillside-meets-sea geography is detailed further in Landmark Buildings and Public Art^※). It is worth noting that the land had a prior history, including use as a military site, which this archive also records in Landmark Legends and Campus Lore^※.

# 1988: Chia-Wei Woo Appointed Founding President; Groundbreaking Ceremony

In September 1988, Professor Chia-Wei Woo was formally appointed as the founding Vice-Chancellor and President of HKUST^※. In November of the same year, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Clear Water Bay campus took place^※, marking the official start of construction.

# 1989: Royal Inscription

On 8 November 1989, HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, visited Clear Water Bay to inscribe the campus cornerstone^※, a symbolic gesture of the British Royal Family's recognition of the new university's importance.

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# 3. The First Vice-Chancellor: The Life and Contributions of Chia-Wei Woo

# Early Background and Academic Career

Chia-Wei Woo was born in Shanghai in 1937 and grew up in Hong Kong^※. He completed his higher education in the United States, earning a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics from Georgetown College and an M.S. and Ph.D. in physics from Washington University in St. Louis, followed by postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Diego. He taught early in his career at Northwestern University, rapidly advancing to become Chair of the Department of Physics. He later moved to the University of California, San Diego, to serve as a provost. In 1983, at the age of just 45, Woo was appointed President of San Francisco State University, becoming the first Chinese American to lead a major university in the United States^※.

# Returning to Hong Kong to Build HKUST

After over 30 years in the United States, Woo was called back to Hong Kong in the early 1980s to join the HKUST Preparatory Committee^※, and was formally appointed as the founding Vice-Chancellor in 1988. His guiding philosophy was simple: "Creating, not replicating." He firmly believed that only a first-rate faculty could cultivate first-rate talent, and he aggressively recruited top scholars from around the world to that end.

Under his leadership, HKUST, originally scheduled to open in 1994, did so three years ahead of schedule, in October 1991^※—a record for the speed of university establishment in Hong Kong's higher education history. By the time the first students arrived, multiple schools were already operating with a substantial faculty in place.

During his tenure, he established "research" as the core of the university's identity, alongside science, engineering, business management, and the humanities and social sciences. In 1999, he facilitated the founding of the Peking University–HKUST Shenzhen-Hong Kong Institution. In 2001, he collaborated with Shenzhen to advance medical research projects. Woo led HKUST until 2001; his ten-year presidency was the foundational decade that saw the university rise from nothing to international prominence^※ (for the full lineage of presidents, see Governance Structure and Successive Leaders (Part 1)^※).

# Passing

Chia-Wei Woo passed away in Hong Kong on 19 March 2025, at the age of 87^※. HKUST issued an official obituary, describing him as "the very embodiment of the HKUST spirit." Hong Kong's Chief Executive also attended the memorial.

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# 4. The Jockey Club's Foundational Gift: Over HK$1.9 Billion from 1987–1992

If the Preparatory Committee solved the question of who would build the university, the how it would be funded was answered by the Hong Kong Jockey Club.

According to the official account of the Jockey Club Charities Trust^※, to build Hong Kong's "third university," the Jockey Club donated over HK$1.9 billion between 1987 and 1992^※ (also see Wikipedia's entry on the Jockey Club^※). This was one of the largest single educational donations in Hong Kong's history.

A Note on the Numbers: HKUST's official milestones page records the Jockey Club's initial 1987 donation as HK$1.5 billion^※ (for the construction of the Clear Water Bay campus). The Jockey Club's figure of "over HK$1.9 billion" represents the cumulative donation throughout the entire construction period from 1987 to 1992^※. The two figures reflect different scopes (single vs. cumulative, starting point vs. total cost) and do not contradict one another. We present both here for readers to discern based on the source; before citing a specific figure, please verify the scope with the original source.

The significance of this donation extends far beyond the money itself. It cemented a deep, enduring bond between the Jockey Club and HKUST—from the initial campus construction and the commissioning of the Red Bird sundial to the 2013 naming of the Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study^※. The Jockey Club's name has been woven through over three decades of the university's development (for more on this naming legacy, see Donations and Naming^※). In the university's founding narrative, early research breakthroughs published in Nature and the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA programme's global number-one ranking are often cited as the payoff on the Jockey Club's heavy bet on the vision of a research university.

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# 5. The Meaning Behind "Science": A Declaration of Identity

Looking back at the naming of HKUST, the choice of "University of Science and Technology" over "Polytechnic" was no casual detail. It was a serious declaration of institutional identity—and its influence lingers today.

In the British higher education tradition, the word "Polytechnic" was commonly associated with vocationally oriented, applied-technology, teaching-focused institutions (like the Hong Kong Polytechnic of the same era). The "Science" in "University of Science and Technology," however, points clearly towards foundational scientific research and the identity of a research university. By deliberately choosing the latter, the Preparatory Committee declared from the outset that this would be a university built on research, benchmarking itself against world-class research universities—looking to models like MIT and Caltech in the United States—rather than an upgraded vocational college.

This naming choice echoes the founding Vice-Chancellor's credo of "creating, not replicating" and aligns closely with HKUST's subsequent trajectory:

• It explains why, from its first decade, HKUST was eager to grace the pages of Nature (such as the world's smallest carbon nanotubes in 2000; see HKUST "Firsts" and Major Breakthroughs^※). Breakthroughs in fundamental research are the very fulfilment of the promise made by the word "Science."
• It also explains why HKUST has long excelled in rankings on "research indicators" like paper impact and per-capita research output, and consistently places near the top of "young university" rankings (see Composite Rankings^※ and A Comparative Look at Hong Kong's Tertiary Landscape^※).
• Most importantly, it dovetails with HKUST's uniqueness as an institution with no predecessor, built from scratch. Unburdened by the vocational-education baggage of an older institution, HKUST could design itself from day one according to the blueprint of a pure research university.

An often-overlooked comparison: although the English names of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and City University of Hong Kong (CityU) no longer include the word "Polytechnic" (both were "renamed" and de-polytechnicised in 1994), their predecessor bodies were polytechnics; their path was one of upgrading from a vocational base. Only HKUST, in a single leap, named itself with "Science and Technology" and structured itself as a research university from the ground up. This terminological difference is the earliest and most concise expression of HKUST's "research gene." In this sense, the word "Science" in its name carries far more than a disciplinary scope—it is a self-positioning of an entire institutional philosophy.

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# 6. Opening Ceremony and Summary: The Three Cornerstones of a University

On 2 October 1991, the university officially opened its doors, welcoming approximately 560 undergraduates and 140 postgraduates^※. On 10 October of that year, the Governor, Sir David Wilson, presided over the formal opening ceremony^※, heralding the official arrival of Hong Kong's third university onto the historical stage.

Stitching the three narrative threads of its prehistory together, HKUST's birth can be understood as the confluence of three cornerstones:

1. A Demand of the Times — The powerful demand for technical talent driven by Hong Kong's service-economy transformation in the 1980s provided the internal impetus to build.
2. The Orchestration of People — The Preparatory Committee, represented by Sir Sze-Yuen Chung, translated the policy intention of building a "third university" into an executable plan for its site, name, and structure.
3. Material Foundation — The Hong Kong Jockey Club's foundational donation of over HK$1.9 billion provided the material resources for the Clear Water Bay campus to rise from the ground.

All three were essential. The opening of that seaside campus in October 1991 was the direct result of these three cornerstones converging. What is worth pondering further is the relationship between these cornerstones—they were not independent, but mutually enabling. Without the demand of the times created by the 1980s economic transformation, the government would have had no motive to plan a third university. Without a heavyweight key founder like Sir Sze-Yuen Chung to orchestrate the effort, that policy intention would have struggled to become a workable plan. And without the Hong Kong Jockey Club's foundational donation of over HK$1.9 billion, even the finest blueprint could not have materialised in three years as the campus that sprang up in Clear Water Bay. These three elements, interlocking, brought about a research university with "no predecessor, built from open ground," taking shape in just a few short years—a case of "express university-building" rare in the annals of global higher education.

This prehistory also provides a key to understanding many of HKUST's later characteristics. Firstly, the founding mission to "serve Hong Kong's economic transformation" explains why the university has, from its inception, carried a strong vein of practicality and entrepreneurialism—from the airport wind-shear warning system (see HKUST "Firsts" and Major Breakthroughs^※) to spin-off enterprises like DJI (see Research Output and Spin-off Companies^※), HKUST has always been willing to connect research tightly with industry and with Hong Kong's practical needs. Secondly, the starting point of "no predecessor, holistically planned" explains why HKUST has dared to attempt constant institutional innovations, from its governance and curriculum to the "Hub-and-Thrust" architecture of its Guangzhou campus (see GZ Campus: The Complete Map of "Four Hubs, Sixteen Thrusts"^※)—the "creating, not replicating" spirit in action, because it simply had no historical baggage to placate. Thirdly, the deep involvement of social capital, like the Jockey Club, established HKUST's enduring tradition of relying on community donations to fuel development (see Lee Shau Kee's HK$400 Million Gift^※ and Donations and Naming^※).

It is fair to say that HKUST was not a "lucky upstart" that appeared from nowhere. It was the product of a precise intersection, at that specific historical juncture in the late 1980s, of the demands of the era, the orchestration of people, and social capital. By understanding this prehistory, the inner logic behind the young university's subsequent "skipping-ahead" performance becomes much easier to grasp.

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