The Named Professorship System: The Philanthropic Lineage of the Wei Lun, Choh-Ming Li, and Lee Quo Wei Professorships

This is a factual archive in the Reference section (08 Finances), with sources cited for each item and no credibility badges assigned. For an institutional overview of named professorships, see 08-finances/finances.md; for background on the related donor families, see 08-finances/new-college-donor-families.md. Living individuals are treated with brevity; no private judgements are made.

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In a nutshell: The named professorship system at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) was founded upon the Endowed Professorship Scheme launched in 1993^※. Over three decades, it has coalesced around three main pillars—the Wei Lun Professorship series established through donations from the Wei Lun Foundation, the Choh-Ming Li Professorship, an internal University honour named after its founding Vice-Chancellor, and more than fifteen discipline-specific named chairs endowed by philanthropists and families—weaving private charity, historical memory, and academic prestige into a distinctive institutional fabric.

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# Why Did CUHK Establish Named Chairs?

An endowed or named professorship is one of the most important fundraising instruments for a modern research university. For the donor, their name, or the name of the person they wish to commemorate, is permanently attached to a professorial post. For the University, it secures additional resources to attract or retain leading scholars while reducing reliance on recurrent government funding.

According to the official explanation from CUHK's Office of Institutional Advancement^※, CUHK's Endowed Professorship Scheme was formally launched in 1993. In terms of mechanics, donors may choose to support an external visiting scholar for a period ranging from one semester to a full academic year, or to fund the research activities of an existing CUHK faculty member. A professorship "can be named after the donor or his/her designate". This institutional arrangement creates a sustainable "channel of exchange" between financial gifts and academic prestige.

Building on this, the University established two further categories of honorary professorships named after historical figures—the Choh-Ming Li Professorship and the Wei Lun Professorship—awarded through internal University selection to high-performing existing faculty, complementing the externally donor-driven chairs. This article examines each layer in turn.

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# The Wei Lun Professorship: Four Decades of Contributions from Dr and Mrs Lee Quo-wei and the Wei Lun Foundation

# Who Was Lee Quo-wei (利國偉)?

Dr the Honourable Lee Quo-wei GBM JP (1918–2013), known in Mandarin as 利國偉, was a native of Kaiping, Guangdong, born in Macau, and one of the pivotal figures in post-war Hong Kong finance. According to his English Wikipedia entry^※ and CUHK's official obituary^※, he joined Hang Seng Bank in 1946, rose through the ranks as a director, and became Executive Chairman in 1983, a post he held until stepping down in 1996. During his tenure, he steered the bank through a steady recovery after Hong Kong's 1986 stock market crash; he was subsequently appointed Honorary Chairman and Honorary Senior Advisor. The official obituary notes that he served Hang Seng Bank for over sixty years.

Lee Quo-wei also held multiple public offices: he served on Hong Kong's Executive and Legislative Councils, was the inaugural chairman of the Education Commission, and acted as an advisor on Hong Kong affairs. He was awarded the Grand Bauhinia Medal in 1997. In the education sector, he is remembered as a key participant in the overall planning of Hong Kong's education system.

# The Wei Lun Foundation and CUHK: From Founding Participation to Named Professorships

According to the official obituary and the citation for Mrs Lee Yick Hoi-lun Helen at CUHK's 84th Congregation^※, Lee Quo-wei's connection with CUHK dates back to the University's founding era—he was CUHK's founding Treasurer, and from 1982 he served as Chairman of the University Council, stepping down in 1997, having served a total of 34 years on the Council. The official obituary states that under his leadership, CUHK developed rapidly into one of Hong Kong's major tertiary institutions.

In 1989, Lee Quo-wei and his wife, Mrs Helen Lee (née Yick Hoi-lun), jointly established the Wei Lun Foundation Limited. The citation for Mrs Lee's honorary doctorate notes that the foundation prioritises education: "It has made significant donations to universities in Hong Kong, institutions in mainland China, and over seventy schools, and also supports medical, infrastructural and cultural projects on the mainland." CUHK is among the foundation's principal beneficiaries.

As stated in the official obituary^※, Dr Lee personally and through the Wei Lun Foundation established the Wei Lun Foundation Endowment Fund at CUHK, supporting projects that include:

• The Wei Lun Visiting Professorship Programme—inviting internationally renowned scholars to CUHK to deliver lectures;
• The Wei Lun Professorship series, established across multiple disciplines;
• The Lee Quo Wei Professor of Neurology—a discipline-specific named chair bearing his own name.

# The Wei Lun Professorship: Mechanics and Recent Appointees

The Wei Lun Professorship is one of the highest professorial titles CUHK confers on its own faculty, ranking alongside the Choh-Ming Li Professorship and awarded periodically by the University. According to a CUHK Communications and Public Relations Office press release on the 2025 inauguration ceremony^※, on 4 March 2025, a new cohort of Choh-Ming Li Professors and Wei Lun Professors was appointed at the University's inauguration ceremony.

Well-documented recent Wei Lun Professors are listed below:

The official CUHK obituary states verbatim: "Dr Lee personally made very generous donations to establish the Wei Lun Foundation Endowment Fund to support many academic and research programmes of the University, including setting up the Wei Lun Visiting Professorship Programme, the Wei Lun Professorships in various disciplines and the Lee Quo Wei Professorship of Neurology." — meaning the Wei Lun Professorship system as a whole was founded upon donations from Lee Quo-wei personally and his foundation.

Lee Quo-wei passed away at the Prince of Wales Hospital on 10 August 2013, aged 95. His widow, Mrs Helen Lee, subsequently assumed the chairmanship of the Wei Lun Foundation, which continues its educational support to this day.

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# The Choh-Ming Li Professorship: An Internal Honour Named After the Founding Vice-Chancellor

# Li Choh-ming and the Founding of CUHK

Li Choh-ming (李卓敏, 1912–1991) is the most central figure in the history of CUHK's establishment. According to his English Wikipedia entry^※, he was born in Guangzhou and earned economics degrees from Nankai University and the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in 1936. He later served as a professor in Berkeley's business school and as director of its Centre for Chinese Studies.

In 1963, Li Choh-ming was tasked with creating The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Berkeley granted him an unprecedented ten-year leave of absence so he could devote himself fully to the project. He became CUHK's founding Vice-Chancellor (serving from 1964 to 1978)—and was the first Chinese person to head a university in Hong Kong. Under his leadership, CUHK awarded its first bachelor's degrees in 1964 and established Hong Kong's first postgraduate programme in 1966. He held firm to a four-year undergraduate curriculum and insisted that "research is the soul of a university," setting the academic direction CUHK would follow for decades. Li Choh-ming passed away in 1991.

# The Choh-Ming Li Professorship: Established in 2013, Honouring Excellence

The Choh-Ming Li Professorship was first awarded on 17 October 2013, at CUHK's 73rd Congregation, held on the University's Foundation Day, to commemorate the scholar who laid the groundwork for the institution. According to a CUHK CPR press release^※:

"This new professorship is named after the late Dr Choh-Ming Li, a distinguished scholar and the founding Vice-Chancellor of The Chinese University of Hong Kong who laid the solid foundation of the University in its early years."

This professorship is awarded through internal University selection, not driven by external donations. Its mechanics are as follows: selected professors must demonstrate "sustained outstanding performance in teaching and research and distinguished contributions to their faculty and the University," and they receive a five-year term with corresponding research funding support, serving to recognise the achievements of serving faculty.

The first cohort (2013) comprised 11 Choh-Ming Li Professors, spanning the disciplines listed below, according to the CUHK Newsletter^※:

Since then, CUHK has held inauguration ceremonies for Choh-Ming Li Professors (and Wei Lun Professors) annually or biennially, continuously appointing new cohorts. According to announcements from individual faculties, current Choh-Ming Li Professors are distributed across many disciplines, including the Faculty of Arts (Chinese Language and Literature), the Faculty of Engineering (Mechanical and Automation Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering), the Faculty of Science (Mathematics, Life Sciences), the Faculty of Medicine (Orthopaedics and Traumatology), and the Faculty of Social Science (Geography and Resource Management, Sociology).

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# The Lee Quo Wei Professorship of Neurology and Other Donor-Endowed Chairs

# The Lee Quo Wei Professorship: A Discipline-Specific Chair Bearing His Name

Beyond the Wei Lun Professorship series, Lee Quo-wei also established a discipline-specific chair bearing his own Chinese given name, 利國偉: the Lee Quo Wei Professor of Neurology. According to the CUHK Office of Institutional Advancement's endowed professorship page^※, this chair exists alongside the chairs supported by the Wei Lun Foundation—the former named after the person, the latter after the foundation, reflecting a dual-track approach in Lee Quo-wei's giving strategy to CUHK. This chair is held within CUHK's Faculty of Medicine, and the current appointee belongs to the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics.

# A List of Current Donor-Endowed Chairs at CUHK

Based on the CUHK Office of Institutional Advancement's endowed professorship page^※, as of the time of this research (2026-06-20), CUHK has established the following endowed professorships (partial list):

Note: Chair titles are compiled from the official webpage at the time of research and may change as new donations are made. The donation amounts and launch years for certain individual chairs are not all available in public records and are not listed here.

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# The Li Ka Shing Foundation: The Largest Single Donation for Medical Professorships

Among the named chairs listed above, donations from the Li Ka Shing Foundation stand out in scale. According to an official press release from the Li Ka Shing Foundation^※, on 31 August 2005, the foundation donated HK$100 million to CUHK. More than 80% of this sum was directed towards supporting interdisciplinary research at CUHK's Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences, with the remainder used to establish CUHK's first Li Ka Shing Professorship. Its inaugural holder was the institute's then-director, Professor Dennis Lo Yuk-ming, under the title "Li Ka Shing Professor of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine."

According to a subsequent CUHK CPR announcement^※, the foundation made another donation to CUHK in 2007, adding a second Li Ka Shing Professorship with a donation of HK$20 million. Its first incumbent was the cell biologist Professor Hsiao-chang Chan. The combined donations for these two professorships represent one of the largest publicly recorded contributions by a single foundation to CUHK's professorship scheme since the Endowed Professorship Scheme launched in 1993.

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# Converting Wealth into Honour: The Institutional Logic of Named Professorships

# How Do the Three Categories Differ?

CUHK's named professorship system can be broadly divided into three categories, each with its own logic:

These three categories jointly constitute CUHK's institutional recognition of "academic achievement"—the external chairs perpetuate the donor's name in perpetuity within a discipline, while the honorary chairs renew their symbolic academic meaning through periodic inauguration ceremonies.

# How Does a Donation Translate into Academic Authority?

From a financial perspective, the standard operational path of an endowed chair works as follows: the donor makes a one-time injection of capital (the endowment). The principal is then conservatively invested, and the annual investment returns (interest/dividends) cover the appointed scholar's research expenses and administrative support. As the CUHK Office of Institutional Advancement^※ puts it, "Your generous support enables CUHK to advance its higher education mission in perpetuity"—"in perpetuity" being the crux of the endowment mechanism: the principal is not drawn down, and the chair exists, in theory, forever.

This mechanism holds equal appeal for donors: naming rights permanently link a philanthropist, or the person they wish to commemorate, with a position of academic standing at a leading university. Having served 34 years as Chairman of the University Council, Lee Quo-wei chose to establish chairs across multiple disciplines under the "Wei Lun" Foundation name—a gesture that served both as a reciprocation of his long service and as an institutional design for extending his influence.

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# The Wei Lun Scholarships: An Extension of the Philanthropic Thread

The philanthropic relationship between Lee Quo-wei/the Wei Lun Foundation and CUHK extends beyond professorships. According to a CUHK CPR press release^※, on 20 September 2012, the Wei Lun Foundation, representing Dr and Mrs Lee, donated HK$30 million to CUHK to establish the "Lee Quo Wei CUHK Golden Jubilee Scholarship Endowment Fund", commemorating the University's 50th anniversary. The annual investment returns from this fund are used to:

• Provide full scholarships to outstanding non-local students from less developed provinces in mainland China;
• Allocate HK$300,000 each year to the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Medicine;
• Provide exchange programme scholarships for undergraduates with financial need.

The scholarships have been disbursed since the 2013–14 academic year. Combined with government support under the Matching Grant Scheme, the real-world educational impact of this HK$30 million donation will continue to unfold over decades.

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