As promised a couple of weeks back, here is a little background on how 'Shanghai' got into the title of what is now Britain's biggest bank.
You'll recall that the full name of HSBC is the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. The Hong Kong bit is clear enough: Hong Kong was a British colony from 1841 to 1997, and its main bank, almost a central bank, was (and still is) the Hong Kong Bank, or simply 'The Bank' for those that live there. As Jeremy Paxman pointed out in his 'Empire' series, the Bank's history has not always been totally untainted, the colony's early days being mixed up with the Opium Wars and other dark deals in which the Bank was doubtless inevitably intertwined....
But Shanghai? China was never anybody's colony: but for a large part of the 19th century it got pushed around by the European powers and might as well have been. In particular the Europeans forced concessions on China, the most obvious being the occupation of large parts of two of its main trading cities of Canton (near Hong Kong) and Shanghai, China's largest city. Even today one can see remnants of the old 'French concession', while the waterfront still has the old warehouses and offices of what were chiefly British interests.
In Hong Kong the Bank has rehoused itself in a modern skyscraper, but in Shanghai the buildings on the waterfront, the 'Bund', are in a kind of time warp; when I visited a couple of years back, I was told that the old (joint, with Hong Kong) HSBC head office was an exact replica of the building in Hong Kong. I did eventually find it, but I think it must be several generations older than its counterpart as I didn't recognise it at first at all. It looked pretty forlorn, and in fact the whole of the Bund is now overshadowed by the ultra modern developments in Pudong, on the other side of the river. Perhaps the Chinese want to show how much better they do things than the old European traders did in olden (i.e. pre-Communist) times.
I could well imagine that pre-1949 the Shanghai branch must have been as important as the Hong Kong one, but of course business nose-dived when the Mao regime took power and capitalism was discredited. But the powers that be in the Bank (mostly Scots, I believe) have always hankered after old glories, and hoped that Shanghai would recover its old profitable ways. They decided to try to stick it out, and keep Shanghai open until better times came round again. A skeleton staff was kept on, including one or two expat British officers.
Although quiet, things weren't too bad until the Cultural Revolution. Most foreigners fled China when that began, but the Bank was forced to keep at least one expat there or face being closed down completely. During the height of the Cultural Revolution this man was a friend of mine, one Tim Cotton. I asked him what life was like in those dark days. "Pretty grim", he said. "Mostly it was plain boring. There was no business, your Chinese friends were always in danger of being denounced and food was scarce. It was a strange feeling, being in one of the world's great cities, but being almost the only non-Chinese, and being surrounded (if you went out) by millions of glassy-eyed screaming locals wearing Chairman Mao suits and just staring at you as if you'd come from Mars". Luckily after a bit he discovered that Standard Chartered Bank were in the same position, and he spent the evenings with his opposite number: deadly rivals in Hong Kong, but thrown together by adversity in China. Whether they could get hold of the excellent Tsing Tao beer in those days or just had to content themselves with playing chess I'm not sure.
And how about today? Shanghai is of course thriving, and no doubt HSBC with it. But HSBC is just one of many international banks there, and it's only in Hong Kong and in the UK where it's the biggest kid on the block.
You'll recall that the full name of HSBC is the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. The Hong Kong bit is clear enough: Hong Kong was a British colony from 1841 to 1997, and its main bank, almost a central bank, was (and still is) the Hong Kong Bank, or simply 'The Bank' for those that live there. As Jeremy Paxman pointed out in his 'Empire' series, the Bank's history has not always been totally untainted, the colony's early days being mixed up with the Opium Wars and other dark deals in which the Bank was doubtless inevitably intertwined....
But Shanghai? China was never anybody's colony: but for a large part of the 19th century it got pushed around by the European powers and might as well have been. In particular the Europeans forced concessions on China, the most obvious being the occupation of large parts of two of its main trading cities of Canton (near Hong Kong) and Shanghai, China's largest city. Even today one can see remnants of the old 'French concession', while the waterfront still has the old warehouses and offices of what were chiefly British interests.
In Hong Kong the Bank has rehoused itself in a modern skyscraper, but in Shanghai the buildings on the waterfront, the 'Bund', are in a kind of time warp; when I visited a couple of years back, I was told that the old (joint, with Hong Kong) HSBC head office was an exact replica of the building in Hong Kong. I did eventually find it, but I think it must be several generations older than its counterpart as I didn't recognise it at first at all. It looked pretty forlorn, and in fact the whole of the Bund is now overshadowed by the ultra modern developments in Pudong, on the other side of the river. Perhaps the Chinese want to show how much better they do things than the old European traders did in olden (i.e. pre-Communist) times.
I could well imagine that pre-1949 the Shanghai branch must have been as important as the Hong Kong one, but of course business nose-dived when the Mao regime took power and capitalism was discredited. But the powers that be in the Bank (mostly Scots, I believe) have always hankered after old glories, and hoped that Shanghai would recover its old profitable ways. They decided to try to stick it out, and keep Shanghai open until better times came round again. A skeleton staff was kept on, including one or two expat British officers.
Although quiet, things weren't too bad until the Cultural Revolution. Most foreigners fled China when that began, but the Bank was forced to keep at least one expat there or face being closed down completely. During the height of the Cultural Revolution this man was a friend of mine, one Tim Cotton. I asked him what life was like in those dark days. "Pretty grim", he said. "Mostly it was plain boring. There was no business, your Chinese friends were always in danger of being denounced and food was scarce. It was a strange feeling, being in one of the world's great cities, but being almost the only non-Chinese, and being surrounded (if you went out) by millions of glassy-eyed screaming locals wearing Chairman Mao suits and just staring at you as if you'd come from Mars". Luckily after a bit he discovered that Standard Chartered Bank were in the same position, and he spent the evenings with his opposite number: deadly rivals in Hong Kong, but thrown together by adversity in China. Whether they could get hold of the excellent Tsing Tao beer in those days or just had to content themselves with playing chess I'm not sure.
And how about today? Shanghai is of course thriving, and no doubt HSBC with it. But HSBC is just one of many international banks there, and it's only in Hong Kong and in the UK where it's the biggest kid on the block.
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