University Newsletter

East Asia Institute

On 4 March the East Asia Institute held its first Advisory Committee meeting followed by a reception at St. John's College. These events marked a momentous step for Cambridge and initiate the campaign to raise awareness of and funding for the Institute.

The Institute will act as the University's bridge to East Asia and East Asian communities throughout the world by providing a dynamic and multi-disciplinary centre for scholars, students and those from all professions with an interest in East Asia. It will enable them to exchange ideas, increase mutual understanding and promote cross-regional studies. It will comprise Research Centres for China, Japan and Korea, and will incorporate the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit. It is hoped to house the Institute in a new building on the Sidgwick Site, which will accommodate the expansion in teaching and research.

The Institute will provide a comprehensive approach involving language, culture, history, politics, law, commerce and social studies. Specific new MPhil conversion courses in Chinese language and culture in collaboration with the Faculties of Law and Social and Political Sciences and the Judge Institute of Management Studies are being drafted The Needham Research Institute will also be joining with the Institute to endow a permanent post in the History of Chinese Science and Technology.

East Asia Institute Advisory Committee member Lord Hurd

Funding is being sought to endow a Professorship or Readership in Chinese Law, which would be a joint appointment between the East Asia Institute and the Faculty of Law. This follows on the success of the Institute's 1998 Chinese Commercial Law Conference. A second such conference is being held in September 1999.

The Institute is in tune with recent calls for more teaching and research in Chinese Studies, notably in the February 1999 Report by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

Over the last five to ten years, funding for the Institute has come mainly from Japan. The largest donation was the gift of £3 million for the Aoi Pavilion extension to the University Library. But Chinese sources have recently given generously, including assistance from the Chuan Lyu Foundation of California; Professor Chun-tu Hsueh, President of the Huang Hsing Foundation of Maryland and advisor to Churchill College; and Dr Seng Tee Lee, a member of the Advisory Committee of the Institute, through The Lee Foundation of Singapore.

The campaign will continue, with the launch of a new brochure, in Chinese and English, for fundraising in Chinese East Asia and North America. For the future prospects of the Institute, Professor David McMullen stated: "I have never doubted that our cause will succeed, and that East Asian Studies will claim the importance in the University that is its due, and that it will meet the challenge of the world order in the next century."