CUHK
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The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) presented a public lecture by Mr. Andrew Seaton, the newly-appointed British Consul-General to Hong Kong and Macao, on “Climate Change: Hong Kong’s Role in the Global Challenge” today (20 October) on campus. About 200 guests attended the lecture, including CUHK staff and students, members of the political, business, environmental and academic sectors, and various foreign consuls.

In the lecture, Mr. Seaton discussed how climate change has become a top policy priority for the British government and one of the most truly global of issues. He recognised that industrialised countries need to take a lead on the issue, and the full participation of the major emerging economies – including China – is crucial to make the global effort successful. There are significant costs to tackling climate change. But the costs of not tackling it will be far higher for our economies and security. All countries need to move to a low carbon economy. This shift will create major new economic and business opportunities – the scale of which is only now becoming clearer.

Mr. Andrew Seaton has been a member of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service since 1977. He has been British Consul-General in Hong Kong since April 2008; other overseas postings have included Chicago, Hong Kong (in the 1990s) and Dakar. He has spent much of his career dealing with Britain’s relations with China and Hong Kong. Mr. Seaton received education from the University of Leeds and Beijing University.

CUHK has been organising the Consuls-General / diplomats lecture series since 2005. A number of famous diplomats, including the Consuls-General of the USA, UK, Japan, France, Korea, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Italy, the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to PRC, and the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of PRC in Hong Kong have delivered lectures on CUHK campus. On 19 November, Mr. Joseph R. Donovan Jr., the new U.S. Consul-General in Hong Kong, will also present a public lecture at CUHK.