100 pieces of enterprise "heirloom", pay tribute to the century-old style!
Since May 11, CCTV Financial Channel has launched a 100-episode micro-documentary "Red Finance and Reliquary 100 Years". Since the establishment of the industry for a hundred years, the party secretaries and chairmen of the hundred enterprises have personally appeared on camera, and they have brought the "heirlooms" of their respective enterprises to the studio site, telling the little-known touching stories behind the relics, tracing the red financial imprint and exploring the chinese economic context.
Today's fifteenth episode tells you about "Zhou Enlai's handwritten letter".
Name of the relic: A letter
Keeper of the relic: Bank of China
Date of the Relic: 1955
Imprint: Zhou Enlai's letter to Zheng Tieru, manager of the Hong Kong branch of the Bank of China
Narrator: Liu Liange, Party Secretary and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank of China
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Hong Kong Island Central is the heart of Hong Kong, the international financial centre. In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, more than 100 banks and multinational financial institutions in the world gathered here. At that time in Hong Kong, the situation was turbulent, and every message here, every slight turmoil, would affect the nerves of all corners of the East and the West.
In the corridor at the top of the Bank of China building, the glare of sunlight came in through the high glass windows, illuminating the letter in his hand. Looking back, the falling money is three big characters, Zhou Enlai!
In 1949, with the end of the three major battles, the corrupt Kuomintang regime would collapse, and all of China would soon usher in liberation. When the people of the whole country were eager to build a peaceful country, the trapped Kuomintang regime continued to resist stubbornly while stepping up its predatory retreat to Taiwan of important institutions and materials.
Zheng Tieru, then manager of the Hong Kong branch of the Bank of China, was both dissatisfied with the Kuomintang's corrupt rule and bitter about the expansion of the civil war. However, at that time, the Bank of China in Hong Kong was still under the control of the Kuomintang, and Zheng Tieru was also targeted by Kuomintang agents. Proficient in foreign exchange business, Zheng Tieru has accumulated a large amount of wealth for the Hong Kong branch of BOC in more than 20 years since he became the manager of the Hong Kong branch in 1927, accumulating more than HK$60 million of his own funds, which is the most powerful among the banks in the Hong Kong financial system. Such huge foreign exchange funds are naturally coveted by the Taiwan authorities. Chiang Kai-shek personally presided over the meeting, sent a delegation headed by Yu Hongjun to Hong Kong secretly, and repeatedly dispatched secret agents to coerce and induce Zheng Tieru to bring funds to Taiwan. However, in order to refuse Taiwan's lobbying and prevent violent plunder, Zheng Tieru pretended to be ill and needed to be hospitalized, and refused to see guests.
In this last darkness before dawn, Zheng Tie was like walking on thin ice. He lived in a small bedroom on the top floor of the bank building at night, and he could go downstairs during the day, and no one but his family could enter, and few people knew.
In fact, Zheng Tieru risked his life long ago and made careful arrangements. He quietly purchased some of the funds to buy land, building materials and equipment to build the Bank of China Tower, and even rented the safes to customers to complete the order procedures in cash; most of the rest of the funds were lent to the Hong Kong textile industry and other factories, often with a total loan of about 30 million Hong Kong dollars. All these measures are aimed at preventing looting by the Taiwan authorities. It wasn't until the funds were successfully transferred that he took a long breath and said "Okay"! Later, in his Autobiography, he said that the work of preventing the Kuomintang government from plundering funds was "the most difficult and tricky thing."
On January 11, 1950, the British and Commonwealth governments recognized the People's Republic of China, and Premier Zhou Enlai issued an order accepting the overseas institutions of the Bank of China. Zheng Tieru received the instructions, took the lead in responding, and telegraphed the whole country to inform the Hong Kong branch of the Bank of China of the uprising! Accept the management of the General Management Office of bank of China! Echoes. Driven by the Bank of China, on January 18, the Kuomintang issued an uprising in the second bureau of the six banks of the Hong Kong financial system to protect property and wait for the people's government to take over. More than a dozen Chinese banks in Hong Kong have followed suit, and branches of Chinese banks in Myanmar, India, Singapore, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries have also responded one after another and returned to the embrace of the people.
Since then, the Bank of China has completely shaken off the shackles of the old bureaucratic capital, gained a new life, and received strong support from the party and the government. After the Hong Kong financial institutions represented by the Bank of China's Hong Kong Branch were taken over by the people's government, they gave full play to the advantages of overseas institutions and overseas business, and became an important hub for New China's trade with the capitalist world and a bridge for absorbing overseas Chinese remittances, and its business volume accounted for 80% to 90% of the total amount of the country at that time. The Bank of China has played a unique and important role in China's breaking through the blockade and embargo, absorbing deposits and supporting the construction of the mainland.
Today's Bank of China, with overseas institutions covering 61 countries and regions, is a highly globalized and integrated bank, and has become a financial heavyweight for China's economic construction!
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(Edited by Sun Yonghui)