Co-creation of global banking: HSBC's transnational evolution between and beyond China and UK

Using co-creation as an analytical framework, this paper examines how HSBC’s institutional identity developed through asymmetrical yet interactive engagements among British founders, colonial administrators, and Chinese employees and customers. Founded in 1865 amid British imperial expansion into Asia and the rise of Chinese commercial enterprise, HSBC emerged as both a creation and an agent of cross-cultural financial exchange. Originating as a financial arm of empire, the bank evolved into an intermediary linking Chinese commerce and British finance, and later redefined itself within the shifting landscape of decolonisation and global capitalism.

This paper traces HSBC’s transnational evolution across three historical stages: the imperial stage, when the bank operated within the hierarchies of empire; the cosmopolitan stage, when it served as a financial conduit between Chinese markets and British capital; and the postcolonial stage, when its identity was reconstituted through the negotiation of multiple sovereignties, regulatory regimes, and cultural expectations within an increasingly fragmented global order.

Building on this three-stage analysis, the paper addresses two interrelated questions. First, how did HSBC’s material and visual archive reflect and reinforce processes of co-creation across different historical moments? Second, in what ways were these processes reshaped through the participation of Chinese staff in corporate governance and managerial practice, and of Chinese customers in influencing the bank’s market orientation and commercial networks? These inquiries reveal the evolving forms of collaboration, adaptation, and negotiation that shaped HSBC’s institutional development. Ultimately, the paper reconsiders HSBC not merely as a British institution operating in Asia but as a hybrid banking enterprise co-created across cultural, economic, and political boundaries.