Lee Shau Kee’s HK$400 Million — Naming a Campus, a Business Building, and an Institute for Advanced Study

# Lee Shau Kee’s HK$400 Million: Naming a Campus, a Business Building, and an Institute for Advanced Study

In HKUST’s genealogy of naming gifts, the Lee Shau Kee (李兆基) family name appears with unusual frequency — the library, a campus, and a business building all bear it. This article focuses on one pivotal donation: a HK$400 million gift from the Lee Shau Kee Foundation in 2007, and the three things it named and supported. It serves as an extension of Donors and Naming^※ and Annual Income, Reserves, and the Endowment Fund^※, zeroing in on the trajectory of a single landmark donation.

# 1. One Donation, Three Beneficiaries

According to an HKUST press release, on 20 March 2007, the Lee Shau Kee Foundation donated HK$400 million to the University^※ (see also the History Timeline^※, 2007 entry). The stated purposes spanned three areas: supporting HKUST’s drive to become a global leader in education and research, enhancing the student learning experience during the transition to the four-year undergraduate curriculum, and establishing an Institute for Advanced Study^※.

Correspondingly, the donation named or supported three entities:

A single gift landing simultaneously as “campus + building + institute” speaks to its weight. The naming of the “Lee Shau Kee Campus” is particularly distinctive — it names not a single building, but an entire new campus situated above the main campus, which opened in 2013 alongside the Lee Shau Kee Business Building (see the History Timeline^※).

# The Opening Ceremony: A Family Appearance in September 2013

Six years elapsed between the donation announcement in 2007 and the campus opening. According to an HKUST press release, construction began in 2009 and was completed by September 2013^※; the opening ceremony was held on 10 September 2013^※.

The ceremony was a high-profile affair: attendees included, according to the release, Lee Shau Kee himself; the then-Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Tony F. Chan (陳繁昌); the then-Chairman of the Council, Dr. Chang Hsin-kang (張信剛); the then-Chairman of the Court, Dr. Chan Chi-bok (陳子博); and multiple vice-presidents and deans^※. Lee Shau Kee’s sons, Peter Lee Ka-kit (李家傑) and Martin Lee Ka-shing (李家誠), also attended^※ — the latter’s name would later appear on another HKUST building, the Martin Ka Shing Lee Innovation Building (see the following section).

As for the new campus’s scale, the press release notes it covers approximately 10 hectares, situated above the main campus^※. The specific buildings include the seven-storey Lee Shau Kee Business Building and the five-storey HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study Lo Ka Chung Building^※; both structures feature a 200-seat lecture theatre, well-equipped classrooms, and multi-function meeting and seminar rooms^※.

The building housing the Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study carries an additional name, that of “Lo Ka Chung (盧家驄)” — meaning that this roughly 10-hectare plot known as the Lee Shau Kee Campus actually layers at least two naming gifts: the overall campus and business building named after Lee Shau Kee, and the IAS building itself named after Lo Ka Chung. Such overlapping of multiple naming rights within a single space is a recurring motif in HKUST’s naming architecture (see also Donors and Naming^※ for a survey of contributions from the Jockey Club, Sir Run Run Shaw, Cheng Yu-tung, and others).

At the ceremony, Lee Shau Kee offered a remark that is now often quoted: 「我衷心希望科大教職員及學生，以至世界各地學者，能充分利用這個新校園及其設施，追求學術卓越，造福社會大眾。」（“I sincerely hope that HKUST staff and students, as well as scholars from around the world, will fully utilise this new campus and its facilities, pursue academic excellence, and benefit the wider community.”）^※ This echoes his statement from 2007 at the time of the donation — 「讓更多有才華的人有機會接受優質教育」（“to give more talented people the opportunity to receive a quality education”）— and reveals a consistent framing of educational philanthropy as a public good, rather than a straightforward transaction for building naming rights.

# 2. Time-Coupling with the Four-Year Curriculum Reform and the IAS

This 2007 donation is tightly time-coupled with two major HKUST developments:

First, the four-year curriculum reform. The donation’s stated purpose explicitly mentions “enhancing the student learning experience during the transition to the four-year undergraduate curriculum.” Hong Kong shifted undergraduate degrees from three to four years starting in 2012 (see The Four-Year Curriculum and the Common Core^※), which drove up the student population and the demand for teaching space. The Lee Shau Kee Campus came into service just in time for the 2012/2013 ramp-up, providing physical capacity for the four-year expansion — this donation can thus be seen as a form of material backing for the reform.

Second, the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). The donation’s purposes included “establishing an Institute for Advanced Study,” and the IAS had indeed been founded in 2006 and subsequently attracted support from multiple quarters (see HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study^※). Lee Shau Kee being honoured as IAS Founding Patron tethers this gift to the University’s most internationally prestigious academic institution.

The press release records Lee himself saying: 「科大志在成為世界一流的知識中心。我希望我的捐贈能幫助大學實現這一目標，讓更多有才華的人有機會接受其優質教育。」（“HKUST aspires to be a world-class knowledge hub. I hope my donation will help the University to achieve this goal, giving more talented people the opportunity to receive its quality educational provision.”）^※

# 3. The Lee Shau Kee Family in HKUST’s Naming Genealogy

This HK$400 million donation is only one link in the Lee family’s support for HKUST. Elsewhere on campus, Lee Shau Kee’s name also appears on:

• The Lee Shau Kee Library — the university library was named in his honour in 2006 (see the History Timeline^※ and Libraries, University Archives, and Special Collections^※);
• More recently, the Martin Ka Shing Lee Innovation Building^※ is also linked to the Lee family (Martin Lee Ka-shing is Lee Shau Kee’s son).

Juxtaposing these landmarks, it is clear that the Lee Shau Kee family’s support for HKUST spans the library, a campus, a business building, a research institute, and an innovation building, making them one of the most prominent families in HKUST’s naming genealogy — alongside the Jockey Club, Cheng Yu-tung (鄭裕彤), Sir Run Run Shaw, Henry Fok Ying-tung (霍英東), and others (see Donors and Naming^※ for details).

In the university’s founding narrative, the significance of large naming gifts like these extends beyond the funds themselves. They bind the city’s industrial and philanthropic power to the growth of a young university — the Jockey Club laying the foundation, Lee Shau Kee naming a campus, Sir Run Run Shaw naming the performing arts centre… HKUST’s physical campus reads almost as a spatial projection of Hong Kong’s charitable giving history.

# Educational Philanthropy as a Longstanding Through-Line in Lee Shau Kee’s Giving

Broadening the lens beyond HKUST, educational philanthropy occupies a long-standing and central position in Lee Shau Kee’s charitable portfolio — this was no one-off gesture catalysed by a single university. Public records show that Lee helped The Chinese University of Hong Kong to establish its MBA programme as early as 1977 — the first such programme in Hong Kong^※; from 1979 he set up the “Lee Shau Kee Scholarships” to support outstanding Hong Kong students for undergraduate study at Oxford^※; and in 1982 he founded the Hong Kong Pei Hua Education Foundation, focusing on cultivating talent and providing education and training opportunities in mainland China^※. It has been reported that Lee had lifetime donation commitments to all nine degree-granting universities in Hong Kong, including a major case of HK$500 million to The University of Hong Kong^※.

Placed within this longer arc, the HK$400 million HKUST gift is no isolated “one-off naming transaction” but a concrete landing in the Clear Water Bay campus of Lee’s longstanding philanthropic philosophy that “education yields the deepest return on investment” — sharing the same logic as his support for the CUHK MBA, the Oxford scholarships, and the Pei Hua Foundation.

# 2025: The Donor Passes; the Names Endure

This donation story also has a final chapter. Lee Shau Kee passed away on 17 March 2025, aged 97, surrounded by family^※. The property group he founded, Henderson Land Development, is now jointly chaired by his sons Peter Lee Ka-kit and Martin Lee Ka-shing. It was reported that he topped the Forbes global rich list for three consecutive years from 1995 to 1997, becoming the wealthiest Chinese and Asian individual of that era^※.

When a donor passes away, a naming right does not vanish — Lee Shau Kee Campus, Lee Shau Kee Business Building, and Lee Shau Kee Library continue to operate under his name, carrying forward a relationship with HKUST that spanned close to two decades: from the library naming in 2006, the HK$400 million donation in 2007, his personal appearance at the campus opening in 2013, to his death in 2025. This naming genealogy has traced a full arc across a donor’s lifetime, becoming a traceable, complete piece of history embedded in HKUST’s physical fabric.

# 4. Conclusion

Viewed within the HKUST narrative, Lee Shau Kee’s HK$400 million donation in 2007 stands as follows:

1. One gift, three uses — simultaneously naming or supporting the Lee Shau Kee Campus, the Lee Shau Kee Business Building, and the Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study;
2. Temporal coupling — tightly aligned in time with the four-year curriculum reform (campus expansion) and the establishment of the IAS (academic prestige);
3. One link in a genealogy — a pivotal entry in the Lee Shau Kee family’s naming genealogy at HKUST (library, campus, business building, institute, innovation building);
4. A complete life-cycle span — from the library naming in 2006 to the donor’s passing in 2025, this relationship has spanned close to two decades: the names abide long after the person.

Note: The donation date (20 March 2007), amount (HK$400 million), and naming details cited in this article are as recorded in the linked sources and are time-sensitive; readers should refer to official HKUST announcements for the most current information.