HSBC Executive Apologises After Calling UK Government ‘Weak’ for Siding With US on China

British envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Sherard Cowper-Coles arrives at the Foreign Ministry for a meeting in Islamabad on April 24, 2009. (Farooq Naeem/AFP via Getty Images)

An HSBC executive has apologised for causing “offence” after it was revealed he called the UK government “weak” for cutting business ties with China at the bidding of the United States.

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, head of public affairs at HSBC and chair of the lobby group China-Britain Business Council, said his “personal comments” don’t reflect the views of the two organisations and apologised “for any offence caused.”

A China expert told The Epoch Times that Mr. Cowper-Coles’s comments show some people have “put less emphasis on national security than they should.”

According to Bloomberg, attendees at a closed-door discussion in London in June “were taken aback” after Mr. Cowper-Coles said the UK should look after its own interests instead of blindly giving in to Washington’s demands.

The former diplomat, whose overseas postings include Washington, Paris, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, cited the exclusion of Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei from the UK’s 5G network as an example of the UK government’s acquiescence to U.S. demand, the report said.

Kearns: HSBC Should Put Its ‘Own House in Order’

Mr. Cowper-Coles’s comments have drawn a mixture of reactions, including some scathing criticisms on HSBC’s stance on China.

Vince Cable, former business secretary and former leader of the Liberal Democrats, told Bloomberg Radio that “deferring excessively to pressure from the United States is unhelpful to the UK and not in our interests.”

But Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Alicia Kearns said HSBC should perhaps “get on with putting their own house in order before criticising others, not least when their actions over the last two years suggest their willingness to act first in the interests of an autocratic communist state.”

Former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who has been sanctioned by the Chinese regime for his vocal stance on human rights abuses in Xinjiang, said Mr. Cowper-Coles was acting like “the worst sort of apologist” who’s “blind to the outrages that the Chinese government commits against its people.” He also said HSBC has “an awful lot to answer for.”

Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, speaks during a debate on the Procurement Bill in Parliament, Westminster, London, on Jan. 9, 2023. (House of Commons/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

The British bank has drawn criticism since 2020 after its Asia-Pacific CEO Peter Wong, who is also a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, openly backed the draconian national security law in Hong Kong.

Another British bank, Standard Chartered, also openly endorsed the law.

British banks including HSBC have also been accused of complicity in suppressing human rights after a report published by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hong Kong said the banks had blocked exiled Hongkongers out of their accounts.

In an email to The Epoch Times on Mr. Cowper-Coles’s remarks, HSBC said, “Sherard was at a private roundtable discussion under the Chatham House Rule and shared his personal views.”

Chatham House Rule is a widely adopted rule for private meetings that allows participants to freely use the information received without identifying the speakers or their affiliation.

Huawei Ban ‘Came Far Too Late in the Day’

Charles Parton, a former diplomat who spend most of his career in or around China, told The Epoch Times on Tuesday that the British government should have banned Huawei before being pushed by the United States.

The decision to ban Huawei was “correct,” the fellow at think tanks the Council on Geostrategy and the Royal United Services Institute said.

“And I think it came far too late in the day. The UK government should have seen the truth [regarding Huawei] far earlier, just as Australia and the United States,” Mr. Parton said.

Signage of a Huawei office is pictured in Kanata, Ont., on May 24, 2022. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Australia banned the Chinese telecommunication giant in 2018. Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson initially allowed Huawei to participate in non-sensitive parts of the UK’s communications network despite the United States’ attempt to push allies to oust the company.

Mr. Johnson U-turned on the decision a few months later, after the United States sanctioned Huawei and banned it from buying advanced U.S. chips.

Three months after Mr. Johnson banned new Huawei equipment and set a deadline of 2027 to strip Huawei from the UK’s 5G network, the Defence Committee published a report saying there was “clear evidence of collusion between Huawei and the Chinese state” and urged the government to accelerate the timetable.

Mr. Parton disputed the school of thought that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a threat to the United States rather than the UK because the two countries share “very much the same systems, the same values, and economic interests and security interests.”

“Clearly, America is the number one enemy of the Chinese Communist Party, but we are closely allied to Americans in many ways. So in that sense, they’re threatening the United States and they’re a threat to us too.”

Mr. Parton said some people, including Mr. Cowper-Coles, have underestimated the CCP’s threat.

“I think they put less emphasis on national security than they should,” he said.

Last month, the parliamentary watchdog overseeing the UK’s intelligence services published a report saying China has managed to “penetrate every sector of the UK’s economy” through takeovers, mergers, and interactions with British academia and industry.

It also said the UK is high on Beijing’s list of targets for espionage and interference, given the UK’s global influence and its relationship with the United States.

The scathing report criticized the government and security agencies for their “serious failure” in protecting UK assets and negligence in tackling Chinese interference activities in the UK.

It also said Whitehall’s approach to the threat of the CCP is still inadequately resourced, incoherent, and short-sighted.