Originally Posted by gudugan

If you qualify for a Premier account anywhere in the world, it works for all countries.
If you specifically open your first HSBC account in China, you still run into every single hurdle. Therefore the loophole is opening it in another country first then using the International account opening to open a linked account in China.
They already withdrew from the US market, but still operate services and a smaller number of branches for Premier customers. Accounts that did not meet the Premier requirements were transferred to other banks.

Since this is a niche product with few data points, it is a bit hard to know if the requirements have changed. You can still open a China account https://www.us.hsbc.com/internationa...rseas-account/ but it is unclear if they need additional information since the time I did it. It's tangentially related but I tried to open a HSBC Taiwan account recently via the same method and it wasn't possible unless I had an apartment with rental contract.