Graduation Address

"2001 Convocation Address." (18 May 2001). (UA Case 67, Box 3)

Lieutenant-Governor, Mr. Chancellor, Madam President, Mr. Vice-President, Distinguished Dignitaries, Fellow Honorary Degree Recipients, Distinguished Guests, including Graduates and your Families and Friends.

I am very honoured to have been asked to join you in celebrating this the 27th Convocation at UNB Saint John. When the president told me I had been selected to receive an honorary degree, I felt very humble, but also proud because this recognition confirms the faith placed in me by many people, in particular my family who are here today. Finally I experienced joy when I realized that all of us who receive degrees today are now members of this wonderful family we call UNB.

When given the opportunity to address my fellow graduates, I had to ask myself what I could share with you from my own experience that might be useful as you consider your own future.

I was born in Hong Kong and first traveled to the People’s Republic of China as a young businessman in 1973. Only 22 years old at the time, I was one of the first foreigners to be allowed to do so. The Red Guard was still active and China was still in the midst of their "cultural revolution." When I saw the conditions of life, especially for young people, I vowed that should I ever have the means, I would do something to improve educational opportunities there. Years later the Chinese leadership realized that to modernize their economy, they needed to modernize their educational system so that graduates would have the education and skills necessary for the new economy.

Having developed many friends in China, this opened the door for me and created a unique opportunity. So after many years of preparatory work with the government of New Brunswick, your department of Education, NBCC Saint John, and UNB Saint John, a partnership was born that allowed me to fulfill my vow: the creation of the Beijing Concord College of Sino-Canada.

The creation of the college, along with my business activities, has enabled me to live and work in Canada, China and around the world, meeting and working with political and business leaders in many countries. This work and travel has led me to a deeper understanding of the importance of education. Today the individual learner must develop the critical thinking and problem solving skills which will allow him or her to achieve personal fulfilment and contribute to a productive and just society.

In many ways what I have experienced is simply a smaller version of what you will face; the challenge of globalization is the experience I wish to share with you.

For me, in an early and simply form, it meant the opening of doors into China, first as a businessman and more recently as an advocate of modern education. Even though I am Chinese, I knew quickly the first time I went to China that it was a foreign country for me, just as Canada was, at first, foreign before it became my permanent home. I had to learn new rules, different ways of behaving, how to operate effectively in new environments. That was globalization back then: the opportunity to cross borders and the need to figure out how to work and live on the other side of those borders. Most important is that there were almost no guidelines or wisdom on how to do this. Yet to turn away from this opportunity and challenge was not an option for me.

How does this experience apply to you and your future? The globalization you face today is much larger, more complicated, more pervasive and more diverse than anything I experienced 25 years ago. It is not simply a characteristic of the economy, political, ethnic, cultural, religious and just about all other aspects of life are now involved.

I had to make choices about crossing borders to enter a "new world." More-and-more you are facing a borderless world with more and faster change, where the crossing of a border into a "new world" is less obvious. Take internet technology and what it does to communication and to learning. The world is rapidly moving to the point where no place and no body of information will be too remote for us to access. Information can easily be accessed across borders.

But information is not knowledge and unless we know how to turn the former into the latter, we will be overwhelmed both as individuals and as communities. This is exactly why it is so important that we not only maintain but continually enhance our skills and understanding in order to continue to learn. The degrees we are awarded today are not the end of the line. Your need to learn will never stop. This is what life-long learning means, and increasingly your life-long learning will involve global understanding.

Because of global pressures and the increasingly borderless world, this learning must help us to better understand one another and how New Brunswick and Canada can work in the global context. There is no alternative, nowhere left to hide.

I recognized and appreciated this attitude when I started working with New Brunswickers. Whether it was past or present governments, educators, business people, just about wherever I went in the province I found that we shared a vision on the importance of coming to terms with globalization.

It is also why I am so proud to be honoured by this particular university. From my first meetings here, it was clear UNBSJ was a place that recognized that key changes had to occur in its education system in response to globalization. It was clear to me that this place was open to the creation of innovation partnerships so the students would graduate from here well educated, committed to learning and able to grasp the importance of globalization. For me, this meant I had found a partner where we could work together to better serve Chinese and Canadian education needs.

Here I met people with a similar vision, people who shared the view of the importance of international experiences as an integral part of education.

After several years of working together, we have been successful in developing a close partnership. We have created a true Canada-China learning environment. At the Beijing Concord College, over thirty Canadian teachers are instructing high school, community college, and university programs. Chinese students have the opportunity to study in New Brunswick. New Brunswick students have taken part in educational exchanges in Beijing. For the third year in a row, UNBSJ MBA students have been able to complete their internships at the Concord College.

Later this summer five fully-funded UNBSJ undergraduates will spend 6 weeks at the Concord College, and next year between 15 and 20 Canadian UNBSJ students will take some of their UNB courses in Beijing.

As graduates of UNBSJ, you also should take enormous pride in your degrees, and for the reasons I have stated. UNBSJ’s international emphasis has uniquely prepared you to advance yourself, your community, and your province in the new global, borderless environment. This is why working with your university has been so important to me.

My sincere thanks to everyone involved in this Convocation. My thanks also to all those who have been part of the partnership to create the Beijing Concord College of Sino-Canada. To the graduates, congratulations and best wishes.

I hope to see you soon in Beijing.