The Chinese University of Hong Kong — Firsts and Bests

Hong Kong's first Chinese Vice-Chancellor, a Nobel-laureate VC, an invention that transformed global prenatal testing, the city's largest and greenest campus — the "firsts" amassed by CUHK over six decades are scattered across its founding, campus, research, and medicine. This article catalogues them systematically, providing years, names, figures, and sources wherever possible, and distinguishes documented facts from the University's official self-descriptions. Numbers are time-sensitive; verify against official sources before citing. For a full numerical dashboard, see Key Facts & Figures at a Glance.

# 1. Institutional Firsts

# 2. Campus Firsts

According to CUHK's Introducing CUHK page^※, the CUHK campus in Sha Tin — at approximately 137.3^※ to 138.4 hectares^※ — is the largest and greenest university campus in Hong Kong, set against a hillside overlooking Tolo Harbour and the Pat Sin Leng range.

Both figures appear on different official CUHK pages (137.3 ha on the Campus page, 138.4 ha on the Introducing page); this represents minor inconsistency between official sources. We record both for reference without adjudicating.

The campus's claims also extend to specific facilities. According to the Wikipedia entry for the CUHK Art Museum^※, the Art Museum, founded in 1971 and part of the Institute of Chinese Studies, is one of the longest-standing public museums within a Hong Kong higher education institution, with a collection of roughly 15,000 items spanning painting, calligraphy, decorative arts, and archaeological artefacts^※. It is one of the larger museum-scale institutions on a Hong Kong university campus — a point the University often uses to illustrate how a university's role extends beyond teaching and research to cultural stewardship.

# 3. Faculty and Academic Structure Firsts

CUHK has accumulated several "first in Hong Kong" or "first in Asia" records at the faculty and degree-structure level:

The dual significance of 1966: Attentive readers will notice that 1966 is the year both of "the Graduate School's founding" and of "the Lingnan Institute's founding and the launch of Hong Kong's first MBA" — this is no coincidence, but a snapshot of the intense period of graduate and professional-school development during CUHK's earliest years (1963–1966), which also reflects founding Vice-Chancellor Li Choh-ming's vision of "rapidly building a research university" (see history.md and ../06-people/faculty-and-leaders.md for details).

# 4. Research and Honours Firsts

Charles Kao had earlier founded the Department of Electronics at CUHK; his Nobel-winning work (the 1966 proposal that ultra-pure glass fibre could transmit light over long distances) is covered in detail in the research and people modules. The current Vice-Chancellor's research honours (Lasker Award, Breakthrough Prize, etc.) are likewise covered in their respective modules.

# 5. Ranking Firsts (F&F 2024/25, as of 23 April 2025)

# 6. Medical Firsts

The depth behind medical firsts: From the approval of a medical school in 1974, to the discovery of cell-free foetal DNA in 1997, to the emergence of NIPT technology in 2008 — in just over thirty years, CUHK's Faculty of Medicine travelled the arc from "Hong Kong's second medical school" to "a global launchpad for prenatal diagnostic technology." This timeline is a concrete illustration of what CUHK's list of "firsts" is actually worth: not self-conferred titles, but a track record underpinned by a clear chronology of research milestones. For the full academic record (referred to by institutional title, per convention), see ../06-people/nobel-and-awards.md and ../06-people/faculty-and-leaders.md.

Compiled on: 1 July 2026. "Firsts" and "bests" shift with time and rankings; some positioning phrases (e.g. "largest and greenest") are the University's official self-description and are cited as such.