HSBC and Standard Chartered slammed for supporting China’s Hong Kong security law
HSBC and Standard Chartered have today been critcised for their support of China’s new security law for Hong Kong.
HSBC’s Asia-Pacific chief executive Peter Wong signed a petition backing the law, the bank said.
HSBC said in a statement: “We respect and support laws and regulations that will enable Hong Kong to recover and rebuild the economy and, at the same time, maintain the principle of ‘one country two systems.”
Standard Chartered later said it believed the law can “help maintain the long term economic and social stability of Hong Kong”.
Both banks are based in the UK but have extensive business in Asia.
Neil O’Brien, Conservative MP for Harborough, Oadby & Wigston said: “All these lovely sentiments about not being an island and looking outward… then they go and back a violation of international law by an increasingly authoritarian state.
“We aren’t an island, nor are the people fighting for freedom in Hong Kong who they just stabbed in the back.”
Tom Tugenhadt, Conservative MP for Tonbridge, Edenbridge and Malling, tweeted: “I wonder why HSBC and Standard Chartered are choosing to back an authoritarian state’s repression of liberties and undermining of the rule of law? Where does this fit in their definition of corporate social responsibility?”
Matthew Henderson, Asia Studies director at the Henry Jackson Society, said: “It is disappointing that an international institution that — throughout its existence — has benefitted from Hong Kong’s freedoms and opportunities, now feels obliged to collaborate with forces that are bent on the destruction of those same freedoms.”
Bill Blain, market strategist and head of alternative assets at Shard Capital, said: “There is something deeply tragic about announcements from HSBC and Standard Chartered supporting the imposition of China’s Security Law in Hong Kong.
“We can all act shocked and damn them for supping with the devil, but neither bank had any real choice but to make the unpalatable decision to support the unsupportable.
“Both know their futures depend too much on China’s patronage to survive without kow-towing.
“However, they have written the first lines of the final few paragraphs of their own obituaries. Banks that are run to appease regulators and flatter governments are unlikely to thrive.”
O’Brien also tweeted: “If you bank with HSBC you are with a bank that is backing Beijing’s repressive new security laws, designed to snuff out freedom in Hong Kong. Other banks are available.”
Standard Chartered declined to comment.