Professor Chan's seminar which was widely covered by the media, had three main themes. The first was Professor Chan's thoughts on "mother-tongue" education. He pointed out that Paris and Tokyo, two world-class financial centres, had students taught in their native languages. He questioned the myth that for Hong Kong to thrive as an international financial centre, its students must be taught in English. Professor Chan also pointed out that there is a perception that students taught in English are brighter than students taught in Chinese. Not only is this perception untrue, it is also socially divisive. By quoting statistics from the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination, Professor Chan showed that students taught in Chinese have been obtaining better results than their counterparts who were taught in English. With regard to using English as the teaching medium, he advocated a needs-driven policy instead of the current ability-driven policy which allows schools to teach in English if they can demonstrate that the students can learn in English.

Next, Professor Chan gave his thoughts on the imbalance between "Research" and "Teaching" in tertiary educational institutions. He pointed out that a professor who is an outstanding researcher is not necessarily an equally outstanding teacher. Nonetheless, the government's funding policy is heavily biased towards attracting excellent researchers because it is considered the more important quality. Professor Chan wondered if Hong Kong could continue to accommodate eight research-oriented tertiary institutions at the expense of allowing the quality of teachers to deteriorate.