Chapter 6 Corporate History Figures Compradore Family

The first foreign-funded bank to appear in Shanghai was Oriental Banking Corporation (Oriental Bank, Bank of East Asia), which was established in 1847. After entering China, it began to issue banknotes, which were circulated in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang.Subsequently, foreign banks entered one after another, and Shanghai gradually became the most important financial center in the Far East.Around 1890, many foreign banks had been concentrated along the Bund. Huangpu Beach No. 12 was the British-funded HSBC Bank, No. 14 was the German-funded Deutsche Bank, No. 15 was the Sino-Russian Daosheng Bank, and No. 18 was the British-funded Mackenzie Bank. Galli (also known as Standard Chartered) Bank, No. 31 is the Japanese-funded Yokohama Specie Bank, and others include British-funded Beneficial Bank, French-funded Orient Bank and so on.They have controlled the lifeline of China's finance for quite a long time.

Among these foreign banks, HSBC is the most prominent. In 1865, HSBC was established in Hong Kong. Its scale is not large among British banks. However, from the very beginning, it only cared about its interests in China, and all its activities revolved around China, so it became the most important bank. The foreign-funded financial institutions in China said at the time, "The income from our country's tariffs must be paid to HSBC, so HSBC has the power to manipulate finance." It has long controlled China's foreign exchange rate until 1935. HSBC's daily foreign exchange The list price is still regarded as the official list price of the Shanghai market.In the process of HSBC's growth, Dongshan Xi's family contributed the most. Since 1874, the three grandparents of the Xi family—Xi Zhengfu, Xi Ligong, and Xi Lusheng—had been the hereditary compradors of HSBC for 55 years. A very astonishing record.

Xi Zhengfu only studied in a private school in the countryside of Dongshan, his hometown, for a few years. His rise was all due to his clever mind, good at managing Sino-foreign relations and government-business relations.It was in the year when Li Hongzhang secured a loan of 2 million yuan in salt tax that he was promoted to a big comprador. Since then, foreign banks such as HSBC have replaced the declining Shanxi ticket dealers as the court's financial partners.Xi Zhengfu and Shanghai Daotai Yuan Shuxun are sworn brothers who exchanged posts, which gives HSBC a special advantage in Shanghai official circles.At that time, the two hottest officials in the court were Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang. The relationship between the two had always been bad, but Xi Zhengfu maintained very good contacts with them, as well as their "money bags" Sheng Xuanhuai and Hu Xueyan.Under the recommendation of Li Hongzhang, he was also awarded the second rank of Red Top Flower Ling.It was under the mediation of Xi Zhengfu that HSBC Bank successively managed loans for Shanghai-Nanjing, Guangzhou-Kowloon, Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo, Jinpu, Jingfeng, Huguang, Puxin and other major railway lines, and its profits were astonishing.

Xi Zhengfu is extremely low-key and rarely participates in social and public activities, even the associations of Dongshan fellow villagers. According to Xi Zhengfu's records, there was only one donation when Jing'an Temple was rebuilt in the ninth year of Guangxu (1883).This person hidden behind the scenes has quietly weaved a huge family network for decades, and penetrated the foreign banking circles in Shanghai one by one, forming a terrifying Xi family force. In addition to the prosperous descendants, the Xi family also formed a "marriage alliance" with some prominent families in Shanghai at that time. For example, the relationship between the Xi family and the Shen family, another comprador family, was intricate. The half-brother Xi Suheng was also adopted by the Shen family and changed his name to Shen Jicheng.The three generations of the Shen family worked as big compradors in Sassoon Matheson for 35 years.At the end of the nineteenth century, Sassoon and HSBC, Swire and British American Tobacco were known as the four major British monopoly groups in China. The marriage between the Xi family and the Shen family allowed HSBC and Sassoon to communicate with each other in business, making them even more powerful and domineering .

In the period of the Republic of China, the relationship between the Xi family and the party-state dignitaries was also very complicated and intimate.Xi Zhengfu's grandson, Xi Debing, was a classmate of Song Ziwen's American University, and another grandson, Xi Demao, married his daughter to Song's younger brother Song Ziliang.This enabled HSBC to maintain a close relationship with the Republic of China government after the fall of the Qing court.Xi's children have served as directors and general managers of the Bank of China, representatives of the International Monetary Fund in China, and directors of the Central Paper Mill.

Because several generations have been in the banking industry, the children of the Xi family are unrivaled in the financial profession.Many years later, Xi Yutang, a descendant of the Xi family, recalled seeing his parents at work when they were young: "His office is very big, and there is a big desk inside. I have never seen such a big desk. There is a desk on the desk. There are more than 20 telephones and telexes. This is the first time I have seen telexes. The calls keep coming in. He holds two or three phones in both hands, speaking Chinese to one for a while, and for the other for a while. He speaks English. He also has 5 assistants, and their English is also very good... At that time, the main international currency was not the US dollar, but the British pound, and the time difference between the UK and Shanghai was 6 hours, so they didn’t have to stay up late to speculate in foreign exchange.”

Xi Yutang also recalled an anecdote between the Xi family’s children and Song Ziwen: Once, Song Ziwen, the president of the Bank of China and “uncle of the country”, went to the office of Xi Songping, the vice president of the Shanghai Branch of the Bank of China and the exchange manager, and heard Xi throwing pounds. , he shouted: "Buy me, buy." Because he came to pay in pounds for a certain import trade, and the amount was relatively large.Xi hung up the phone immediately, asked how much he wanted in pounds and when he wanted it, and promised to raise money in time without any delay. Then, he picked up the phone and continued to throw pounds out on his own.Song Ziwen went to attend Songping's office, turned around and checked the foreign exchange in and out account year by year, and found that he was making money almost every month.Afterwards, Song Ziwen said to the foreign exchange staff of the Bank of China, "You just listen to Xi Songping, and don't let anyone interrupt, including the president and vice president."

After 1949, most of the Xi family's children withdrew from the mainland with foreign banks, and all the real estate and industrial shares they invested in disappeared. After 2000, a kind of "Xijia Benbang Cuisine" became popular in Shanghai. Its dishes are elegant and sweet, and the taste is between Chinese and Western.There are many fashionable people who like it, but few people know its previous life.