On September 25, 2021, Meng Wanzhou wore a red dress, gracefully stepped off the plane, and then bent down and touched the ground, a scene deeply imprinted in the hearts of countless Chinese.
After 1,028 days of illegal detention in Canada, she has finally returned to the embrace of her motherland, and tens of thousands of people have spontaneously arrived and are excited.
Because this is not only a personal victory for Meng Wanzhou, but also a powerful demonstration of China's strength.
In strong contrast, the despicable promoter behind the bad - HSBC is about to collapse at the moment and fall into a sad situation, which makes people cry out for joy!
1
December 1, 2018, an ordinary day, became the darkest day in the life of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.
At that time, she was about to return home from Vancouver, Canada, and no one expected that this elegant professional woman had just stepped off the plane and was arrested on the spot by the Canadian police on the grounds of "at the request of the United States".
This is a very strange thing. Meng Wanzhou was obviously just passing through Vancouver for a transit, and was neither a terminal nor intended to enter Canada. But the Canadian police seemed to have laid an ambush in advance, and suddenly appeared and detained people.
What is even more outrageous is the reason for the accusation from the US side - Meng Wanzhou "deceived" HSBC and concealed Huawei's business dealings in Iran, which is suspected of "bank fraud".
When the news came back to China, the people of the whole country were fried. In an interview, Mr. Ren Zhengfei held back tears and said: "As a father, of course I feel sorry for my daughter. But Huawei will never give in to this. "
You must know that Meng Wanzhou was not only handcuffed at that time, but also put in a Canadian prison. Overnight, Huawei set up a team of lawyers, who called the "dream team", and invited the top lawyers from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Later, an insider revealed that the legal materials prepared alone could fill several large suitcases, stacked higher than a person.
The Chinese government has been even more swift in its response. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Canadian and US ambassadors to China overnight, and spokesman Geng Shuang slapped the table at the press conference and said: "This is a serious political incident, and the Chinese side demands that the people be released immediately!" "
During that time, the staff of the Chinese Embassy in Canada ran to the prison every day to make sure that Meng Wanzhou was not wronged inside.
After nearly three years of unremitting efforts by the Chinese government, Meng Wanzhou finally regained her freedom in September 2021.
And with the gradual disclosure of the details of the case, the mask of hypocrisy of HSBC has also been completely torn off.
2
Back in 2013, HSBC was fined $1.9 billion by the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly laundering money from Mexican drug lords. This is not a small amount, and HSBC's top management is in a hurry.
That's when they came up with a "brilliant" idea - to sacrifice Huawei as a "scapegoat" to the Americans.
They secretly packaged Huawei's internal documents and sent them to the U.S. Department of Justice, the most critical of which was Ms. Meng's PowerPoint presentation to HSBC executives at a Hong Kong restaurant in August 2013.
This PPT was supposed to be Huawei's initiative to explain its business in Iran to HSBC, but it was taken out of context by HSBC and said that it was "evidence of fraud".
To add insult to injury, internal HSBC emails show that their executives have already met to discuss Huawei's business in Iran. One email clearly stated: "We are well aware that Huawei has compliant business dealings in Iran. "
But in order to please American dads, they pretended to be stupid and said in court that they were "kept in the dark".
The Financial Times later revealed that HSBC had reached a secret agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice at that time: as long as it cooperated with Huawei, the previous money laundering case would be dealt with lightly. This is simply a modern version of "taking people's money and eliminating disasters for others"!
Even the "Economist", which has always been pro-Western, couldn't stand it anymore, and posted an article saying that HSBC was "the lowest point of business ethics".
The most ironic thing is that there is still a plaque in the HSBC headquarters building that reads "Honesty is the foundation", and the homepage of the official website still reads "Customer trust is the foundation of our existence".
As the saying goes, "people are doing what they are watching", and HSBC's operation of "selling friends for glory" was soon ruthlessly slapped in the face by the market.
3
As soon as the 2020 financial report came out, the entire financial circle was stunned - HSBC's pre-tax profit plummeted by 34%, the largest decline in CCB in more than 150 years! The worst is the Asian market, where the proportion of profits fell from 87.5% to 65.3%, which is equivalent to halving.
What's even more fatal is that Chinese customers' trust in HSBC has plummeted. According to a third-party survey, HSBC's customer satisfaction in China fell from the top five in the industry to the top 10 in 2021.
A 20-year-old customer at HSBC said, "I'd rather put my money under my pillow than with this treacherous bank!" "
What's even more ruthless is a number of central enterprises, PetroChina, China Railway Construction and other "big financiers" have withdrawn their capital and switched to Chinese-funded banks.
At the beginning of 2021, HSBC had to lay off 35,000 people in one go, which is equivalent to 1 out of every 7 employees.
The Hong Kong and mainland branches became the hardest hit areas, and some employees cried: "I was still doing business for customers in the morning, and I received a layoff notice in the afternoon." What's even worse is that those management trainees who have just graduated have been "optimized" in less than half a year after joining the company.
The capital market is even more ruthless. HSBC's share price has plummeted from HK$70 in 2018 to HK$40, and even Morgan Stanley, which has always been optimistic about foreign banks, downgraded its rating, bluntly saying that "credit bankruptcy is more terrible than financial bankruptcy".
What is even more embarrassing for HSBC is that at a time when it is in a hurry, China's financial market has ushered in a new round of opening up.
Since 2020, China has lifted restrictions on foreign ownership in securities companies and fund management companies, and further expanded the opening up of the financial sector.
However, these policy dividends seem to have drifted away from HSBC.
A financial industry insider admitted: "In the financial industry, which emphasizes credibility, once you lose trust, it is almost impossible to regain the market." "
epilogue
Now, HSBC is paying a heavy price for its betrayal. In addition to declining performance and layoffs and shrinking its balance sheet, the old bank is also facing a deeper crisis: the collapse of corporate culture and the depreciation of brand value.
In the latest release of the global bank brand value list, HSBC is far behind Chinese banks such as ICBC and CCB.
If you want me to say, this is a typical "self-inflicted sin cannot live". Doing business pays attention to the word "integrity", you treat customers as bargaining chips, and the market will treat you as a joke!
What do you think about this?
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