This was the remark by Arthur Li.

李國璋的說話 : 

So from that point of view, I have no worry in that he is dean, my main worry on academic side was that he has no higher degree equal to a PhD or an MD or LLD, now you may say in law is not necessary. Well, if it is not necessary, why is such a degree there in the first place? And when you look at the other referee professors, they all got LLDs. Therefore, either he hasn’t tried or he is too busy or he doesn’t think it is important, but if that’s the case he will be devaluated maybe of the lecturers, professors who have got PhDs, who have gone through the rigours of academic pursues. Now, can you, can someone be in charge of promotion of another person who actually has not gone through the same rigours as that other person and give an honest independent objective view? And I would put my question here is that, I do have my doubt about this.

However, I do have some worries that I feel I should articulate, the Dean, the vice chancellor, in those days, were elected by the Faculty. So all you have to do is to be a nice guy to everyone, and I think Johannes Chan is a very nice guy. And at this point, I’d like to declare my interest; there was one of the referees which is my cousin. And my cousin has already said he’s a very very nice guy.

The second thing I’d like to bring up is that, we’ve been said that we’ve been under a lot of pressure form the liaison office, from the Chief Executive, and I’d like to say very categorically I have not been under any pressure. It has been said that the left-wing press, 文匯報、大公報 have been running hundreds of articles against this candidate. And quite honestly, I don’t read 文匯報 or 大公報, and I think most people in Hong Kong do not read 文匯報 or 大公報. Relatively most people take a negative view, the more they say about something, the more we feel anti whatever they say. However, on the other side, it’s that the political parties are very well organized, very well informed, very well…how would I say… very keen to push this candidate by, as Leonie said, by intimidation, by failing our council meeting, by having concern groups and all these threatening JRs and everything. But I just wonder why is these political parties so keen on this candidate, is it, you know, in the Mainland university, they have 黨委書記. Do they want a 黨委書記 at Hong Kong U? Is he a 黨委書記, is he put in here as a 黨委書記? So I don’t know, forgetting about the politics, all these things made me feel very uncomfortable and very uneasy with this candidate.