A History of Student Movements at CUHK (1960s–2010s)

⚠️ This article belongs to the unofficial-history module (14, student movement history). It compiles events with multi-source corroboration, presenting different accounts in an objective, attributed form and taking no position. The highly politicised campus conflicts of 2019 and after are a sensitive touch-point; this article does not narrate them. Related external sources are listed at 18-wilder-movements/source-directory.md.

Content concerning specific living individuals is anonymised as "Mr./Ms. [surname]"; historical names and already-public events are recorded factually according to sources.

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# I. Background to the "Fiery Years" (1960s)

Hong Kong in the 1960s saw the awakening of student political consciousness amid a number of social tensions:

• After the 1966–1967 Hong Kong riots, local young people began a critical rethinking of colonial rule;
• University students began taking part in grassroots community investigations (the "Concern for Society" movement), going into neighbourhoods to learn about labour and poverty issues;
• International left-wing currents (the May 1968 events in France, the anti-war movement in the United States) also permeated Hong Kong campuses;
• A "Know China" movement arose among students, forming the social basis for the later "Chinese Language Campaign."

CUHK students (then belonging to the three constituent colleges of Chung Chi, New Asia, and United College) were among the important participants in Hong Kong's student movement of this period, forming part of the "student elite" activist group together with University of Hong Kong students.

According to the Wikipedia entry "1970s Hong Kong student movement"^※, this late-1960s awakening further split, in the 1970s, into three main currents — the "Nationalist faction," the "Social-action faction," and the "Liberal faction" — of which the Nationalist faction, according to the source, was "based at the Chinese University of Hong Kong." The factional divisions running through the whole "fiery years" period, and the individuals involved, are treated in a separate article in this volume: see The Factional Struggles of the Fiery Years.

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# II. The Chinese Language Campaign (1968–1974)

# 2.1 Course of the campaign

According to the Cambridge China Quarterly academic paper^※, the "Chinese Language Campaign" arose around 1968, calling for Chinese (written Cantonese and Chinese generally) to be given official-language status alongside English in Hong Kong.

The campaign brought together three main forces in a united front:

1. The "Joint Working Group for the Chinese Language as an Official Language," representing roughly 298 organisations;
2. A joint committee formed by thirteen youth magazines and student groups;
3. The Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) — an alliance of student unions from the various tertiary institutions, of which the CUHK Student Union was a member.

According to the academic source, the campaign gained broad public support in the early 1970s: a territory-wide petition launched by the above united front collected roughly 332,400 signatures, close to one-tenth of Hong Kong's population at the time.

# 2.2 Outcome

The Hong Kong colonial government formally made Chinese one of the official languages (alongside English) in 1974, the campaign's key achievement. The formalisation of Chinese-language status carried both symbolic and substantive significance at the legal and government-document level.

According to academic research, the campaign began as a demand for language rights and later developed into broader local consciousness and anti-colonial nationalist sentiment, with some participants' political orientation shifting toward support for Chinese unification. Different participants have since interpreted the nature of the campaign differently.

A fuller account of the Chinese Language Campaign — the Chung Chi Student Union's early petition, the united front of more than 330 organisations, and the original text of the 1974 Official Languages Ordinance — is covered in this volume's In-depth Study of the Chinese Language Campaign.

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# III. The Baodiao Movement and "Know China, Concern for Society" Thought (1970–1971)

# 3.1 HKFS and Baodiao: street action in 1971

According to the Wikipedia entry "Hong Kong Federation of Students"^※, the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) was founded in May 1958, initially with only four member institutions, making it Hong Kong's earliest cross-institutional student alliance, and it went on to serve as the organising platform for the Chinese Language Campaign, the June Fourth solidarity actions, the Umbrella Movement, and other cross-campus actions; the CUHK Student Union was one of its members.

The immediate trigger for the dispute was an external sovereignty arrangement: according to the same source, in May 1971 the United States government decided that it would hand administrative control of the Ryukyu Islands — including the Diaoyu Islands — to Japan in 1972, provoking discontent among communities across the Taiwan Strait and in overseas Chinese communities, and triggering postwar Hong Kong's first large-scale student street movement, the "Baodiao (Defend the Diaoyu Islands) movement." According to the same source:

• On 14 February 1971, Hong Kong students formed the "Hong Kong Committee for the Defence of the Diaoyu Islands" and subsequently demonstrated outside the Japanese Consulate-General in Hong Kong; 21 people were arrested, seven of them university students;
• On 17 April 1971, the University of Hong Kong Students' Union organised a peaceful rally attended by roughly 1,000 students;
• On 7 July 1971, HKFS launched a further demonstration over the Diaoyu Islands sovereignty issue; because HKFS had not yet completed society registration at the time, some participating students were arrested by police.

# 3.2 The convergence of Baodiao and "Know China" currents

According to this volume's The Factional Struggles of the Fiery Years, the street mobilisation of the Baodiao movement subsequently converged with the on-campus current of "Know China, Concern for Society" ("认中关社"), becoming one of the sources that gave rise to the 1970s split between the Nationalist and Social-action factions — the Nationalist faction, according to the source, was "based at the Chinese University of Hong Kong." Mr. Chan Yuk-cheung (陳毓祥) (1950–1996), a Baodiao leader who held a CUHK master's degree, is a representative case of this current moving from campus reading groups into street action, ultimately at the cost of his life; see §1.3 of that article for detail.

The specific factional composition, individuals involved, and analysis of thought within the Baodiao movement and "Know China, Concern for Society" current are the core subject of a separate dedicated article; this section records only the points where it connects to CUHK's student-movement thread, without repeating that material — see The Factional Struggles of the Fiery Years.

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# IV. The 1989 June Fourth Events and Hong Kong Students' Response

# 4.1 Collective action by Hong Kong students

According to the Ohio State Origins academic article^※, the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) was one of the first organisations in Hong Kong to publicly express solidarity with the Beijing student movement:

• raising funds from students to support the movement;
• sending a delegation to Beijing to observe the situation on the ground;
• helping organise, in late May 1989, what is estimated to be the largest solidarity march in Hong Kong's history (with an estimated 600,000 to 1,000,000 participants).

CUHK students took part in related activities through the Student Union.

# 4.2 The June Fourth commemoration tradition

After 1989, CUHK became one of the important sites of June Fourth commemoration activity in Hong Kong: each year on June Fourth, the Student Union and related groups organised commemorative events on campus, including forums and vigils.

Note: the changed circumstances of June Fourth commemoration in Hong Kong from 2020 onward are a highly politicised matter and are not narrated in this article; related media sources can be consulted via this site's link directory (see 18-wilder-movements/source-directory.md).

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# V. The Chinese University Student Press (中大學生報, CUSP): From a Joint College Publication to an Independent Press

According to Wikipedia^※ and the Chinese Wikipedia entry^※, the Chinese University Student Press (CUSP) is published by the CUHK Student Union and is one of Hong Kong's longer-running university student publications, known for its sustained coverage of social issues and for content that has attracted controversy.

# 5.1 Origins: from "joint publication of the three colleges" to an independent press (1967–1975)

The origins of the Chinese University Student Press predate even the CUHK Student Union, founded in 1971. According to combined Wikipedia sources, its predecessor can be traced to the "Chung Chi–New Asia–United Joint Student Press," a joint publication of the three constituent colleges' student unions dating from late 1967. The formally named Chinese University Student Press Joint Publication began on 3 October 1969, with an editorial board made up of editors from all three colleges; this joint arrangement lasted until the end of 1970. In 1971, after the CUHK Student Union was formed, the Press formally came under the Union's executive committee, and the word "joint publication" was dropped from its name. From 1975, the Press became independent of the executive committee, run instead by a cabinet of a popularly elected editor-in-chief and deputy editors chosen by campus-wide vote — establishing the basic structure it would keep for decades afterward: an editorial board of 8 to 12 elected members, holding a status equal to the Student Union executive committee and CUHK Campus Radio, both being student organisations elected by the entire undergraduate body.

In terms of format, according to sources, between 1969 and 1978 the Press was published as a large-format ("octavo") newspaper; from volume 11 in 1979 it switched to a "sixteen-page" ("十六開度") magazine format; after March 2024 it became a purely online publication. According to sources, the Press was published on a roughly bimonthly schedule for a long period, with a print run of around four to five thousand copies per issue, covering sections such as society, features, lifestyle, gender, erotica, columns, and reader submissions.

Clarification (to avoid confusion): according to this volume's A History of the Rise and Fall of Student Organisations, U-Beat and its English edition Varsity are teaching-practicum publications of the School of Journalism and Communication, produced as part of the academic curriculum, and are not media under the Student Union. The Student Union's own campus media are the Chinese University Student Press and Campus Radio (operating since 1999); the two media lines should not be confused.

# 5.2 Controversies over the years: not limited to 2007

The Chinese University Student Press's history includes more than one controversy; 2007 was not the only case:

• The 2004 "vulgar language" incident: the Press published an article with a title containing vulgar language, drawing reaction on and off campus; the Press subsequently published a response article in November 2004.
• The 2007 erotica-section controversy (detailed in the next subsection): the most far-reaching and longest-running of the disputes.
• The 2015 "Ma Liu Shui Press" incident: according to sources, the executive committee set up a campus reporter team on its own initiative, and its operation was subsequently characterised as an organisation not compliant with the Union's rules.
• The 2017 election dispute: that year's election saw two cabinets, "Po Pin" and "Ying," contest the editor-in-chief and deputy editor positions; the process was alleged to involve electoral irregularities, and the result was ultimately overturned and re-run.

# 5.3 The 2007 erotica-section controversy

According to the Wikipedia account^※, in May 2007 the Chinese University Student Press was named by a number of newspapers over a section containing "erotic" content (including a survey on sexual behaviour; the section, according to sources, had been added since December 2006), which drew wide public attention and debate in Hong Kong society:

• Points of contention included: the limits of free expression and publication for campus publications, the university's handling of the matter and its educational responsibility, and media intervention in student self-publishing.
• The university ultimately decided not to discipline the students involved.
• At the court level, a High Court judge ruled that the application for the relevant classification ("indecent" rating) was not established, and rescinded the interim classification order concerning the Chinese University Student Press and Ming Pao.
• The episode ran from roughly May 2007 to October 2008.

According to the various positions: the university held that there should be clear limits on the content management of student publications; the Press maintained editorial autonomy; some public opinion held that the content exceeded appropriate bounds, while other opinion characterised outside intervention as press censorship. No conclusion was reached.

# 5.4 The Press's fate after the Student Union's dissolution (2021–2022)

According to combined sources, after the CUHK Student Union declared dissolution in 2021 (detailed in the next section), the Chinese University Student Press, as a Union-affiliated body, simultaneously lost its original room and funding source. On 11 August 2022, the Press was renamed University Community Press and re-registered as a school-affiliated society — a student publication born from the 1967 joint publication of the three colleges, carrying an independent-press tradition of more than half a century, continuing thereafter under a new name and a new organisational affiliation.

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# VI. The 2014 Umbrella Movement: The Class Boycott Began at CUHK

According to combined Wikipedia and RFA sources, on 22 September 2014, the class boycott launched by the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) began, with more than 13,000 tertiary students and staff gathering at CUHK to demand genuine universal suffrage by 2017 and the withdrawal of the NPC Standing Committee's "31 August Decision" — making CUHK's University Mall (detailed below among related landmarks) one of the points of origin of this territory-wide movement.

The class boycott subsequently converged with secondary-school groups such as Scholarism to form the "Double Unions" coalition, and on the night of 26 September 2014 developed into the "Reclaim Civic Square" action, which triggered a 79-day occupation (commonly known as the "Umbrella Movement"), ending with the full clearance of the Causeway Bay and Tamar Legislative Council protest sites on 15 December of the same year. According to CUHK poll-based estimates, over the course of the movement roughly 1.2 million people across Hong Kong (about one-sixth of the population) took part in some form; more than 20% of respondents said they had visited an occupation site in person.

CUHK students (via the Student Union, HKFS representatives, and spontaneous participation) were among the important participant groups in this movement. According to sources, the movement itself spanned multiple institutions and social strata and was not initiated or led solely by CUHK students; CUHK's role as the site where the class boycott began gives it a particular place in the collective memory of this movement.

The detailed course of the Umbrella Movement, the demands of the various parties, and its subsequent political impact extend far beyond the campus and constitute a major event in Hong Kong social history; this article records only CUHK's role at the movement's launch stage and does not offer political commentary on the movement as a whole. Campus-political events after 2019 related to this are, per this site's convention, not narrated in this article; see the Module 18 link directory.

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# VII. The CUHK Student Union (1971–2022): Organisational Structure and Half a Century of Action

According to the HKFP report^※, the CUHK Student Union was founded in 1971, and lived through major historical moments including the Chinese Language Campaign, the 1989 June Fourth response, and the 2014 Umbrella Movement. The organisational evolution of the Student Union, and the rise and fall of college-level student unions and student media, are detailed in a separate article in this volume, A History of the Rise and Fall of Student Organisations, organised by organisational thread; this section covers only the Student Union's own action timeline across its half-century.

# 7.1 Organisational structure

According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry "Chinese University of Hong Kong Students' Union"^※, under the Constitution of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Students' Union, the Student Union comprised the following bodies:

According to the same source, at its peak the Student Union had 159 affiliated groups under it, comprising 4 college unions, 59 department societies, and 96 other affiliated societies, making it the largest student self-governance network on the CUHK campus.

# 7.2 Half-century action timeline (1971–2005)

Since its founding in 1971, besides its involvement in the Chinese Language Campaign and June Fourth solidarity (see Sections III and IV), the Student Union, according to Chinese Wikipedia^※ and the Wikipedia entry "Crying for CUHK Incident"^※, also carried out a number of collective actions centred on campus-internal issues:

• The 1988 "four-to-three" academic-structure dispute: according to sources, the Education Commission's Third Report proposed changing CUHK from a four-year to a three-year degree structure; the Student Union organised a boycott of classes involving more than 3,000 staff and students in opposition. The university subsequently introduced a "unit system," and most departments formally moved to a three-year structure by 1994, until CUHK reverted to a four-year structure in 2006 to align with the territory-wide "3-3-4" curriculum reform. This boycott predates the 2014 Umbrella Movement by more than a quarter-century, indicating that the Student Union's use of large-scale class boycotts over campus-internal issues as a tactic did not begin in 2014.
• 2004: the Student Union organised action opposing a university proposal to cut resources and close certain departments.
• The 2005 "Crying for CUHK" incident: the then-Vice-Chancellor promoted a teaching-language reform under the banner of "internationalisation," planning to change the medium of instruction in most departments from Chinese to English and to raise the proportion of non-local students from 10% to 25%. Students wrote an open letter titled "Crying for CUHK" ("哭中大") in protest, and the Student Union issued a special opposition bulletin; as of 8 a.m. on 13 February 2005, the petition had collected 791 signatures (559 students, 27 teachers, 194 alumni, and 11 outside individuals). According to sources, the university ultimately maintained its original policy and the incident produced no substantive policy change, but it did trigger public discussion in Hong Kong society over the path of university internationalisation.

According to the various positions: the opposing side held that the language-policy reform departed from CUHK's founding principle of "bilingualism" and harmed the interests of local students; the supporting side (some alumni and department heads) held that internationalisation was "an inevitable trend"; the university maintained its original policy, stressing that the reform aimed to cultivate bilingual talent. The matter was not substantively resolved, and no conclusion was reached.

# 7.3 Dissolution and cessation of operations, 2021–2022

On 7 October 2021, the CUHK Student Union declared its dissolution, with the entire body of representatives resigning. According to HKFP, quoting a former Student Union leader, the Union was forced to dissolve "in such an ugly way." According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry^※, on 7 November 2021 the Union's Judicial Committee at one point ruled that the dissolution declaration was unconstitutional and invalid; subsequently, owing to a shortage of committee members, the Judicial Committee was no longer able to function normally, and on 31 July 2022 the Judicial Committee declared the Union "suspended indefinitely."

The specific political background to the CUHK Student Union's 2021 dissolution involves the political circumstances in Hong Kong at the time and is a highly politicised matter; this article records only the Union's organisational structure, its actions over the years, and the objective dates of its dissolution/suspension, without laying out a political narrative of the events (related external links are in Module 18).

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# VIII. Timeline of Movements

The following summarises, in chronological order, the cross-campus/on-campus collective actions covered in this article, for quick reference (see the corresponding sections above for full detail):

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# Related Reading

• In-depth Study of the Chinese Language Campaign: From the Chung Chi Student Union's Early Petition to the 1974 Official Languages — the full course of the Chinese Language Campaign and the original text of the Official Languages Ordinance
• The Factional Struggles of the Fiery Years: The Nationalist Faction, the Social-action Faction, and "Know China, Concern for Society" — a dedicated treatment of the factional splits in the 1970s student movement
• A History of the Rise and Fall of Student Organisations (1969–2026) — a timeline organised by organisation (Student Union, college student unions, student media)
• 18-wilder-movements: Source Directory — external source links for events from 2019 onward

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