22 February 2001

In a society that hides Chinese success in business, how can we be expected to be recognised professionally?

It seems a distant day when the average Brit will not primarily equate'Chinese' with 'number 23, sweet and sour chicken balls' from the ubiquitous local chinky. Ahy yes, that most visible of Chinese institutions, the family-run takeaway. With every outlet a seeming franchise consisting of reliable traits, the ever-swinging door to the kitchen wafting through delightful foody smells and flashing glimpses of someone flipping chow mein around in a wok. They are places where locals enjoy a tentative familiarity with the mother who snaps deep fried colloquialisms at them with frightening rapidity, before handing over the customer's slice of exoticness for that week. For the lucky purchaser it is a special treat, quality you can't get from Sainsburys, yet still a bargain: a meal, an opportunity to visit a different culture of people and an enjoyable taste sensation for less than a tenner. It's a novelty, it's cheap and they're just cooking up the dishes that Chinese people regularly do - how easy is that? No wonder there are so many takeaways about and no Chinese law firms or record stores or, for example, high street banks.

Or at least not an instantly recogniseable one. HSBC stands for HongKong and Shanghai Banking Corporation though there is no reason why you should know that since over here, it is always kept to its abbreviated form. Its full title is never mentioned on leaflets, never quietly subtitiled under the HSBC logo counterposed to Hong Kong where the golden words shine down on the masses from the auspices of a huge glass architecture. In the confusing re-badging of the Midland Bank ('goodbye griffin, hello weird diamond thing') and its subsequent re-naming, you would have been forgiven for not questioning its new persona. Just imagine if they had used its full title. I mean aside from having to lengthen all their branches in order to fit the name on. 'A Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation on every high street?! A Chinese bank?! But they'll roll all our money into banana fritter! Or fritter all our money into spring rolls...'

The British public are just not ready to accept Chinese as professionals, bar the token Chinese MP or filmstar. In a country where the public see the Chinese as a race of takeaway owners or their progeny, it would be understandable to hide a bank's origins, to preserve the austerity of an English bank, to preserve the confidence of its investors. But if this were true (and I am not saying it is, just that it is not totally unbelievable), it does not inspire my confidence in British perceptions. Hong Kong is no longer a colony vicariously fuelling the British arm of the Asian boom. Britain needs to embrace the China already here and a Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank standing proud on every high street would be a start.