in 1978, szeto wah was elected chairman of the joint committee of the chinese language movement during the second wave of the movement for the equal status of the chinese language to english. the joint committee laid out three goals: the full implementation of the chinese language as the official language, teaching with chinese in school, and improvement of the chinese teaching along with english. the movement died down as the sino-british negotiation over the hong kong sovereignty took the spotlight in the early 1980s.