In September 2021, Meng Wanzhou returned to his motherland in a red dress. At that time, many people only knew that she had been illegally detained by Canada for 1028 days, which could not be separated from the political manipulation of the US government.
But who was the one who actually handed the knife?
Over the years, the answer has become more and more clear: HSBC.
In this multi-year international game, this old-fashioned British Bank not only disbelieved, and actively cooperated with the US side to smash Chinese enterprises, but also Huawei's most difficult times "hand in hand", but in exchange, the reputation collapsed, customer loss, and global retreat.
Now this account has been settled one by one.
Looking back at this betrayal, the story begins in 2012. At that time, HSBC was caught in a money laundering scandal and was "targeted" by the US Department of Justice. In order to keep the license and stabilize the business, HSBC signed an "Deferred Prosecution Agreement", promising to cooperate with the US investigation in exchange for "leniency".
The time has come in 2016, and the agreement is about to expire, and HSBC needs to deliver a "score sheet".
Huawei, on the other hand, has just become the "most suitable target". According to public judicial documents, HSBC voluntarily provided Huawei-related materials to the United States, including a PPT in which Meng Wanzhou personally introduced the compliance situation.
The document was "moved" by HSBC, and the original 16 page content was deleted to only the most critical and easily misleading 4 pages, which became the so-called "evidence" of Meng's "suspicion of fraud".
What's even more outrageous is that HSBC actually knew about the business structure between Huawei and Iran, and participated in some fund settlements, but it pretended to be "cheated" when handing in materials.
Materials disclosed by British courts in 2020 confirm that executives have long been well aware of the relevant transactions. To put it bluntly, this is not "misled", but "cooperating with the performance".
The key "forensic meeting" was not held in a financial institution or on a formal occasion, but while eating steak in a western restaurant in Hong Kong. Such an "informal" operation itself reveals a smell of guilty conscience.
In the end, HSBC was not forced, but chose the team itself. but it did not think that this "nomination" not only did not change the body sign, but instead became the first domino card to overthrow itself.
Once exposed, the response of the Chinese market was almost a “second-rate response.”
The first to take action were several surprisingly large central enterprises. Large state-owned enterprises such as COFCO and Sinochem immediately announced the termination of foreign exchange business cooperation with HSBC.
Immediately afterwards, Shenzhen and Shanghai's multi-location HSBC branches appeared in a "squeezing" flow of cash collection, a single day of cash collection of millions, this is not a financial storm, it is a moment of confidence collapse.
According to industry statistics, within one year after the incident, HSBC's corporate customer churn rate in the Chinese market soared to 65%. Once these customers are lost, it is almost impossible to recover them.
HSBC was disqualified from underwriting China's U.S. dollar bonds, which directly kicked it out of the core financial circles. What's more serious is that the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Exchange eliminated HSBC stocks, and the capital market voted with their feet, and investors withdrew their funds to avoid risks.
The financial report is the final "report card". In 2023, HSBC's profits in Greater China will fall by more than 60% year-on-year.
By 2024, the company will have to close more than 80 branches in China and even withdraw its main business in multiple cities, retaining only symbolic windows. In the brand recognition survey, HSBC's rating in the China market dropped sharply from 90% favorable rating to a negative range.
At the same time, Huawei uses practical actions to "save itself". The self-developed settlement system was launched, achieving direct connections with 27 Chinese banks, completely bypassing the HSBC interface.
Local financial institutions such as China Merchants Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China quickly filled vacancies with digital advantages, but instead used this to "shuffle" the market landscape.
HSBC hit China, as a result of which the Chinese market was "hand-and-hand" and it did not even have time to react.
The collapse of the China market is only the beginning. The subsequent contraction of global business will be HSBC's real "fracture period."
After 2021, HSBC closed more than 300 branches in the European and American markets in a row and cut more than 30,000 jobs. The UK’s domestic business has shrunk entirely, the U.S. business has shrunk dramatically, and even Southeast Asia, the once “growth engine”, has also suffered from countries’ caution about the U.S. dominated banking system.
The government of India directly kicked it out of the list of infrastructure financing projects. Thailand and Vietnam suspended some projects cooperation. The market value also followed the "spring of water": from the peak period more than 2 trillion Hong Kong dollars, dropped to only more than 80 billion Hong Kong dollars in 2025, the whole evaporated by 70%.
Credibility problems also arise one after another. The European Union fined HSBC 31.7 million euros for manipulating the foreign exchange market and froze its euro settlement qualification.
The central bank of the UK has issued fines of £100 million, and the Swiss branch has also exploded a gold smuggling scandal.
The company's interior also ceased, the president of the Asia-Pacific region, Huang Bisheng, resigned, and the management layer emerged a vacuum; from 2024 to 2025, the cumulative dismissal of 40,000 people, even executives began to "hop boat".
HSBC had no choice but to launch a new model of "flagship branch" to serve only high-net-worth customers and further lose its mass market.
Going to this step, HSBC is no longer "winds and rains", but "shakes and falls". it used to rely on its business in China to support global profits, and now loses China, like a giant broke the main line.
You can't smash the pot when you eat, and you can't betray old friends.
It was once one of the most popular foreign-funded banks in the Chinese market, dating back more than 150 years.
From its entry into China after the Opium War to its rapid expansion after reform and opening up, HSBC is almost "the bank that foreigners know the most in China." But it is precisely because of "understanding" that this betrayal is even more unforgivable.
It is neither ignorant nor forced, but chooses to sacrifice partners at a critical moment to safeguard its interests in the United States.
The Meng Wenzhou incident is a complex case of diplomatic, legal, and commercial interplay, but the core logic behind it is simple: China is no longer the market that can only passively accept rules.
If you respect, it welcomes you; if you betray, it leaves you out.
The decline of HSBC is both the result of its own greed and the inevitable reaction to the changes in the world pattern. Its lessons, will be written in the teaching materials of business schools, will also be considered by more companies as a "preview".
With action, HSBC tells the world that the price of betrayal is not only the loss of the market, but also the loss of credit, the loss of the future.
It goes without saying who the real loser is. In the era of global reshuffle, those players who only focus on short profits and do not abide by the rules will eventually be liquidated by the market one by one. HSBC is the most typical example.
China, on the other hand, is no longer the "passive party" that allows others to choose partners for cooperation. Although the outcome of this game of trust and betrayal has long been predetermined, the warning left to the world has just begun.