Victor and William Fung Foundation

Themed New Historical Divide, B.C. (Before Coronavirus) and After, a New Norm in the areas of Geopolitics, Supply Chain and Innovation, the annual Fung Scholars Leadership Conference 2020 was held 10 Oct 2020 virtually. The conference brought together 65 Fung Scholars and Fung Fellows from Bangladesh, Hong Kong, mainland China, Japan, Singapore, UK and USA. We were honored to have Dr. Victor Fung, Group Chairman of Fung Group, Mr. Spencer Fung, Executive Chairman of Li & Fung and Dr. Lap-Chee Tsui, Founding President of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences to share their insights on the current COVID-19 world and the challenges and opportunities brought by the pandemic.  

The Fung Scholars Leadership Conference is an annual event organized by the Victor and William Fung Foundation, a way to nurture future world leaders through supporting university students to experience different cultures and environments early in their careers. This is the first ever annual conference conducted virtually. 

The Conference began with Dr. Victor Fung’s speech on “Geopolitical Shifts at the Threshold of a New Era“. He highlighted the three major trends: Digitalization, Geopolitical shift and Pandemic that impact the last decade significantly and will continue to impact the world in the future. He described the world is shifting from unimodal to multimodal system, in which international collaboration is required to face the world huge challenges.  

Mr. Spencer Fung gave a speech on “Leadership during Times of Crisis”. He reminded the Fung Scholars to face crisis in a positive manner – The bigger the crisis, the bigger the opportunity” by sharing his own career experiences.  

Dr. Lap-Chee Tsui had a dialogue with a Fung Scholar, Vicky Kung (FS2011-12, The University of Hong Kong) on “Opportunities brought by COVID-19 in Research and Technology Development“. Dr. Tsui shared his insights In fighting against COVID-19 in the level of individual and research and technology and the importance of public education and social behavior to prevent and control infection, followed by a panel discussion with Dr. Victor Fung and Dr. Lap-Chee Tsui and moderated by Mr. Kai-man Wong, Director of the Victor and William Fung Foundation.   

“In each incident or risk, there’s always opportunity, face the risk and the danger hit on, you probably learn in the process and skills set you will never learn in ordinary time,” said Mr. Kai-man Wong, the closing speaker of the conference.