Ok, I finally found a good reference:

"In the 1960s and 1970s, David Rockefeller, then-chairman of Chase Manhattan, frequently visited Hong Kong and opened more branch offices there. In 1973, the bank became the Bank of China's first American correspondent bank." [0]

The guy who wrote the book in 2016 has an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, works for the Congressional Research Service and is an affiliate faculty member at the economics department of George Mason University.

Is this still fake news? Or was David Rockefeller the first American Banker to open a branch in China after numerous trips in Hong Kong?

[0] https://books.google.ch/books?id=Qaa7DAAAQBAJ&pg=PT116&lpg=P...