Chairman's message

Fighting against COVID-19 with Chinese medicine

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought along tremendous challenges to the University. When the pandemic was at worst, face-to-face learning was completely cancelled. While our teaching teams sought to overcome the challenges by delivering quality education online, our experts in Chinese medicine also went the extra mile to serve the community at a critical time. They provided free online consultation services to COVID-19 patients and delivered herbal medicine directly to people’s front doors. Their collaborative efforts and determination have truly done us proud.

We are also pleased to have received further recognition of our leading contributions in the fight against the pandemic, following the appointment by the HKSAR Government as one of the operators of the Kai Tak Holding Centre in early 2022. As the sole Chinese medicine service provider in the Centre, we offered not only Chinese medicine-based treatment services to the resident elderly COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms, but also provided Chinese medicine prescription service to the rest of the beds in the Centre. It is encouraging to see that Chinese medicine is playing a more active role in the fight against this global pandemic, and HKBU is contributing substantially to the cause.

Chinese Medicine Hospital

In June 2021, the University was awarded the service deed to manage the territory’s first Chinese medicine hospital (CMH) and has since been working vigorously for its commission. In November 2021, the HKBU Chinese Medicine Hospital Company Limited (the Company) was established.

The University and the Company have been working actively on the preparatory tasks together. Thanks to the invaluable input of the Board of the Company and the professionalism of our colleagues, the commissioning work has been progressing smoothly. 

Campus development

With the generous support of The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, the construction of the new Jockey Club Campus of Creativity on Renfrew Road, Kowloon Tong is well underway. This new campus, which stands as a towering icon of creative education and also a cutting-edge example of new living-learning communities, will undoubtedly strengthen our capacity to fuel the development of the creative arts and art-tech when completed.

Another major campus development project which will further enhance our capacity to nurture future-ready talents and empower our pioneering research is the redevelopment of the Ho Sin Hang Campus. A consultation programme on Phase 1 of the project was conducted in December 2021 to collect views from the University community, including their aspirations and expectations of this major redevelopment project, as well as their preferences and priorities of concern. I am delighted that the University community has provided us with valuable inputs in how the redeveloped campus could best serve the purpose in providing the best education and research environment to our students and colleagues. 

Moving onwards with hope and confidence

As a university, we have taken bold steps forward in the past year on different fronts. I am grateful to the whole HKBU community for their commitment, hard work and creativity, as it has made it all possible. Let us move forward with hope and confidence, and together with our campus in the Greater Bay Area (GBA), continue to contribute to the advancement of Hong Kong, the GBA and the nation with our unique strengths in creative arts, communication, healthcare and technology.  With the world resuming normal operation after the pandemic, I believe that we will welcome an even greater and more fruitful year in delivering the best student experience and in advancing research to tackle the grand challenges of the time.