the man who paid the men who stare at goats

I don't know if you know this, but that Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation refered to in the Chinese press release as signing a deal with the SRI isn't a local provincial concern, but the self-proclaimed "World's Local Bank" HSBC, plc.. The company was founded in the aftermath of the opium wars, on territory won in those wars, and largely ran as a funder for the opium trade in its early years. Sutherland, the accepted founder of the bank, was also on the board of P&O shipping line, which at that time was importing opium into China.

HSBC also owns the Midland Bank, formerly renowned as MI6's bank of choice.

On an unrelated note there's a very interesting bit in the third part of the Evidence of Revision series about Murchison's Hotel del Charro and its links to Nixon, Marcello, Hoover, DH Byrd (described as a "Murchison underboss"), and so on.