Vampire State by Ian Williams

Author:Ian Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

CHAPTER 17

The Humiliation of the World’s Local Bank

‘China and Hong Kong don’t owe HSBC anything, the China business at HSBC can be replaced overnight by banks from China and other countries. We need to let the UK government, politicians, British companies like HSBC know which side of the bread is buttered.’

Leung Chun-ying, former Hong Kong chief executive

HSBC’s chief executive Noel Quinn looked uncomfortable facing the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which summoned him in January 2021 to explain why the bank froze the assets of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists. ‘To the extent that we have frozen accounts, it is because we are obliged to under request from the police authorities as they undertake their investigations,’ he said, insisting that politics never came into it. He was asked if he understood the difference between political accusations and criminal accusations. ‘As a banker, I am not in a position to be able to judge the motives or the validity of a legal instruction from a law enforcement authority,’ he replied. ‘I’m not making a moral judgement. It’s not my position to make a moral or political judgement on these matters. I have to comply with the law.’1

The questions then turned to the draconian national security law imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong in June 2020, effectively criminalising political opposition, which was supported by HSBC. ‘We, HSBC, issued a statement at that point in time along with many other companies in Hong Kong that we believed that it was appropriate to stabilise the security position in Hong Kong,’ replied Quinn.

Labour MP Chris Bryant was not impressed. ‘Do you understand how it might seem to a lot of British people who have bank accounts with you that you are effectively aiding and abetting one of the biggest crackdowns on democracy in the world?’

Quinn didn’t see it that way at all. ‘I believe, Mr Bryant, that we play a very expansive role in Hong Kong and have done for 155 years and intend to do so going forward.’

Tory MP Andrew Rosindell could barely contain himself: ‘I have to say that I am slightly aghast at what I have been hearing. It seems to me that there is a huge degree of double standards, hypocrisy and, in fact, appeasement towards the regime in China, which has now extended to Hong Kong.’

The uncomfortable grilling of one of the world’s top bankers came after two years of political upheaval in the former British colony in which the lender that once styled itself ‘the world’s local bank’ was accused of doing the Communist Party’s bidding.

In December 2020, Ted Hui, a legislator stripped of his seat after he was deemed ‘insufficiently patriotic’, fled with his family to the UK. On arrival, he discovered that HSBC had frozen their bank accounts at the request of the Hong Kong police.2 A Hong Kong court later sentenced Hui in absentia to three-and-a-half years in jail. The bank also froze accounts linked to a church that had helped young protesters and which was raided by the police.

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