Cathay Pacific Airways, which has repeatedly angered Chinese people: The British group is in power and has deep roots with China.

The history of /Cathay Pacific/Cathy Pacific continued by Black Material is based on a mysterious British family, which is widely distributed in China.

Cathay Pacific, known as the Light of Hong Kong, sounds like a China company, but it, like the well-known China toothpaste, is dominated by foreign capital. It needs to be popularized here. Although Zhonghua Toothpaste is the founding brand of toothpaste industry in China, and has always ranked first in China toothpaste market, it has been acquired by a European company, and it is no longer a domestic brand. Interestingly, many people think that foreign companies' black toothpaste was founded in China and Shanghai.

Therefore, we can't just look at the names when judging China enterprises or foreign enterprises. This Cathay Pacific Airlines is the first airline in Hong Kong, which belongs to Swire Group. You must be familiar with this name. It belongs to Taikooli in Beijing and Chengdu. The leader of this Swire Group is a mysterious British family-Huaiya Shi, which has been established for more than 200 years. Huaiya Shi's family is one of the invisible giants in Britain, with countless industries covering a wide range of fields, most of which are in China. Cathay Pacific is one of their industries.

At present, the global aviation industry is affected by the epidemic. Wind data shows that 1340 listed companies mentioned the impact of the epidemic on their operations in the 2020 A-share annual report season, accounting for almost one-third of the total number of A-share listed companies. There are 585 companies with losses in their main business due to the epidemic, involving 59 industries. Among them, airlines suffered the most losses, with an average loss of 654.38+0.6 billion. 2020 is an extremely dark year for the aviation industry.

In 2020, Cathay Pacific also chose to "break its arm to protect itself", laying off 8,500 people and closing Dragonair. Despite this, it still failed to recover the declining performance, with a loss of nearly 21600 million Hong Kong dollars.

However, Cathay Pacific, as the largest airline in Hong Kong, is still a giant in the industry. We should know that Cathay Pacific Airways has an aviation market share as high as 80% in Hong Kong, and its enterprise has a long history, occupying the natural advantage of Hong Kong's free trade port and monopolizing the international routes of passenger and cargo transportation in the Mainland.

If you want to know the history of Cathay Pacific, you have to start with Swire Group. 18 16. John Huaiya Shi, the founder of Swire, set up a small trading company in Liverpool, England, mainly engaged in textile import and export trade. Then the American Civil War broke out, and Huaiya Shi began to shift its market and set its sights on Asia.

1866 Swire foreign firm and Swire Shipping Company were established in Shanghai, and soon after, Swire foreign firm opened a branch in Hong Kong.

Swire Steamship Company was also very good. Steamship merchants and other enterprises * * * controlled the Yangtze River shipping industry in China at that time.

Cathay Pacific was originally founded by a large American company and Swire Group. After the withdrawal of American capital, Swire Group became the major shareholder of Cathay Pacific. Because at that time, Shi Huaiya had seen that air transportation must be the key to future development. In addition, he also used the engineering technology of Swire Dock to develop an aircraft maintenance company at Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong, called Pacific Aircraft Maintenance and Supply Company, which was the predecessor of Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company.

From 1962 to 1967, Cathay Pacific's passenger traffic has increased steadily every year. By 1973, Cathay Pacific has transported more than10 million passengers a year. 1979, Cathay Pacific introduced the first Boeing 747- 200. And in the following year, it opened a route from Hong Kong to London, becoming a global airline.

Subsequently, Cathay Pacific began to make every effort to build an international route network, and successively opened international routes to Vancouver, Frankfurt, Rome and Los Angeles. By 1983, Cathay Pacific's routes have covered more than 20 cities around the world and successfully ranked among the major international airlines.

1985, Cathay Pacific's competitors appeared. In order to break Cathay Pacific's monopoly position in Hong Kong, Dragonair with China background was announced. Dragonair is a Hong Kong-Macao International Investment Co., Ltd. composed of Cao Cursor, Bao Yugang and Fok Ying-tung, as well as China Resources and China Merchants.

However, Cathay Pacific is obviously more senior. It immediately banned Dragonair, and even the British Hong Kong government demanded that most of Dragonair's shares be controlled by the British, forcing the newly established Dragonair to carry out large-scale asset restructuring.

Cathay Pacific adopted the way of making distant friends and attacking near, contacting outside and attacking inside, and finally made Dragonair "yield" and become his younger brother. 1990 Cathay Pacific acquired Dragonair with Swire and CITIC. With the support of Swire and CITIC, Cathay Pacific officially took over Dragonair and became the second largest shareholder.

As a matter of fact, Cathay Pacific Airlines has always occupied the largest share of Hong Kong's aviation business and won a place in the international market. Therefore, naturally, many China investors and enterprises want to participate in it, but Cathay Pacific Airlines has rejected them one by one. The reason behind this is that the Huaiya Shi family is in power and will not split the shares easily. Prior to this, Rong Zhijian, a top tycoon, tried to buy Cathay Pacific, but ultimately failed. Citic's participation was actually due to the special background at that time, which also led to a small shareholding ratio of Cathay Pacific Chinese enterprises.

Cathay Pacific's success, on the one hand, benefited from the rapid growth of Hong Kong in 1970s and 1980s. Hong Kong became one of the four little dragons in Asia and gradually became the world aviation hub, so Cathay Pacific at that time was also synonymous with the aviation industry in Hong Kong. On the other hand, thanks to the mainland's reform and opening up, it has caught up with the huge dividend of civil aviation demand brought by China's economic growth. At the same time, the level of civil aviation development in the Mainland was relatively weak in the 1980s, so Hong Kong became an important transit point for mainland residents to fly to the world.

Cathay Pacific is also improving its competitiveness in an all-round way. At that time, Cathay Pacific can be said to be a benchmark: from profitability and competitive strength to brand reputation and service level, the internationalization and specialization of Cathay Pacific are the goals that mainland counterparts catch up with.

But there is a saying that only the giants themselves can defeat the giants, which has been verified by Cathay Pacific.

2065438+On May 29th, 2007, Cathay Pacific Airlines announced that the name brands hung on the chests of flight attendants in Hong Kong and Taiwan Province Province were changed from displaying only English names to using both Chinese and English names. This news immediately caused great dissatisfaction among Cathay Pacific employees.

It is reported that Cathay Pacific employees are worried that displaying China famous brands will be "copied" or harassed by malicious people. In an interview, a flight attendant of Cathay Pacific said that the reason why she didn't want to use Chinese names was because she was "rustic" and lacked "noble westernization color", and it would also affect the chances of making friends with "high-end westerners" and reduce the chances of "getting rid of poverty".

After this incident, Cathay Pacific flight attendants were exposed to negative news that discriminated against mainlanders and were arrogant towards mainland tourists. Some flight attendants even pretend that they don't know Mandarin and only listen to English to provide services. As a result, the image of Cathay Pacific began to decline, and it was difficult for mainland tourists who occupied a large market share to identify with Cathay Pacific.

Cathay Pacific's service quality has also been repeatedly complained on the Internet. Some netizens commented on Cathay Pacific: worshiping foreign things and obsessing over foreigners, discriminating against mainlanders, being a father in English, being a guest in Cantonese and being a dog in Mandarin, which is the consistent style of Cathay Pacific.

20 19 Cathay Pacific was named by CCTV again, but it was not as simple as the stewardess speaking English.

2019 August 1 1, in the CCTV news new media "anchor said network broadcast", the host Kang Hui directly kindly reminded Cathay Pacific and told Cathay Pacific: Do it or die. And said: Oh, I heard that some Cathay Pacific staff pretended not to understand Mandarin, so they spoke English: No zuo no die. Subsequently, Cathay Pacific also became famous in Global Times and People's Daily.

It is reported that Cathay Pacific Airways indulged its employees in the violent chaos in Hong Kong. There are even Cathay Pacific flight attendants clamoring for "disappointing the tourism industry and making tourists afraid to come to Hong Kong again". Cathay Pacific immediately conducted emergency public relations. According to the news of August 2065438+09 12, Cui Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration, met with Shi Minglun, chairman of Swire Group, in Beijing. Subsequently, Cathay Pacific did a lot of remedial measures, but the shadow of this matter still lingers.

Therefore, the decline of Cathay Pacific has its own reasons. Cathay Pacific and Dragonair have no advantage in the price of flights to Hong Kong, which is not as good as Hong Kong Airlines and mainland airlines. Today, both Hong Kong and the Mainland have witnessed the rise of the aviation industry. Cathay Pacific's position as an international aviation hub in Hong Kong has long been replaced, and its mainland counterparts such as Air China, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines have also performed strongly, further narrowing Cathay Pacific's inland economic hinterland.

It is worth mentioning that the Huaiya Shi family behind the scenes has a very wide business scope, covering almost people's basic necessities, with an annual turnover of nearly 200 billion yuan. Among them, drinks and real estate are the most important. The Huaiya Shi family reached an agreement with Coca-Cola Company within several decades, which produced most of the cokes we usually drink.

As another pillar industry of Huaiya Shi family, real estate has a considerable rental income in one year, and key business districts such as Beijing Sanlitun Taikooli, Guangzhou taikoo hui and Chengdu Yuanyang Taikooli can create hundreds of millions of income in one year.

Because Swire is not a listed company, its scale is still a mystery. Some Hong Kong analysts said: "It is estimated that only the direct family members can make it clear."