What is the bill calling for changes to Chinese University’s governing council?

They propose cutting the number of council members from 55 members to 34 and adjusting the ratio of external appointees to internal ones to 2:1.

They also seek to raise the voting threshold for deciding the university’s vice-chancellor to three-quarters, up from the current simple majority, which allows only seven members to vote yes in extreme cases.

The governing body drafted its own proposals in 2009 and 2016 following calls for reform. However, the overhauls lost momentum and were eventually not pursued.

Pro-establishment figures have also called for greater scrutiny of Tuan’s governance, following accusations he was sympathetic to protesters when the campus became a battleground between police and anti-government demonstrators in 2019.

Tuan’s reappointment in April last year sparked a further outcry from them.

The university later argued that scouring the globe for a suitable replacement would take time if council members could not agree on his three-year extension.

The university became mired in further controversy when it unveiled a simplified version of a split-colour Chinese phoenix emblem in October in the run-up to the institution’s 60th anniversary this year.

Lawmakers and council members Cheung, Tang and Lau accused the institution’s management of bypassing the governing body and demanded an independent investigation into the redesign process.

They also described the incident as a “black box” affair that poorly reflected on the university’s governance. The insignia was dropped a week later and the previous one used instead.

Leung singled out Tuan for criticism on Sunday, accusing him of failing to show up at last Friday’s bills committee meeting. He also accused the council secretary and university vice-president Eric Ng Shu-pui for giving up his neutrality and joined the opponents to petition against the reform bill.

In a letter to the bills committee last week, Charles Leung Ying-wai, a council member and chairman of the board of the university’s New Asia College, also expressed discontent with how the governing body was run and called for the earlier passage of the law. He called the council a rubber stamp body.

Council member Kelvin Yeung Yu-ming, who is also the chairman of the university’s convocation – a statutory body made up of all its graduates – is a key figure lobbying against the bill. With like-minded fellow council members, he launched an online petition campaign which has since July 22 collected close to 1,600 supporting signatures as of 11.30am on Sunday.

Among those who have signed are Stanley Hui Hon-chung, former Hong Kong Airport Authority CEO, Louis Ng Chi-wa, director of the Hong Kong Palace Museum, and government pandemic adviser Professor David Hui Shu-cheong.

Former Hong Kong Observatory assistant director Leung Wing-mo and ex-undersecretary for commerce and economic development Godfrey Leung King-kwok were also among the signatories.

Chief Executive’s Policy Unit deputy head Nicholas Kwan Ka-ming also signed but later withdrew his signature, after public concerns over a possible conflict of roles.

Yeung maintained opponents were not against reforms, but accused the three lawmakers behind the bill of bypassing the council, without having consulted members or obtaining its formal approval. Yeung also said the trio had ignored the consensus reached in the council’s 2016 review report.

Yeung stressed that educational autonomy and academic freedom were protected under the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution.

The lawmakers rejected those claims, saying their bill incorporated most of the proposals in the 2016 review.

Yeung came up with an alternative proposal that suggested cutting the number of lawmaker members on the council to two and having two seats reserved for convocation members. He also wants the voting threshold for deciding the vice-chancellor to be set at two-thirds.

Opponents have said the bills committee should wait until after the university council’s discussion of the reform bill.

“There is no need for lawmakers to rush as the legislature is in recess over the summer holiday,” said Yeung’s supporter and fellow council member Enders Lam Wai-hung.

Yeung had also called for the bills committee to hold public hearings to collect views from alumni and other stakeholders first.

His call was rejected by the bills committee, with member Bill Tang expressing worries that public hearings could easily degenerate into “personal attacks on individual lawmakers”.

The bills committee eventually opted for written statements. The deadline for the interested parties to submit views is 5pm on Monday. As of noon last Thursday, the committee had received 40 submissions, 25 of which were in favour of the bill.

At last Friday’s meeting, committee chairman Priscilla Leung Mei-fun also stressed that there was no question of having to wait until after the university council had endorsed the bill.

“Legco is not a rubber stamp of the university,” she said.