Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison and its owner Li Ka-shing have found themselves in the crosshairs of the Chinese government over a multibillion-dollar port deal, which received heavy criticism in state media for supposedly undermining China’s national interests. This external pressure has stalled the deal and raised questions about the extent of Beijing’s influence over Hong Kong companies and Chinese-owned ports around the world, notably near the Panama canal. Jeffie Lam, Denise Tsang, and Lam Ka-sing from the South China Morning Post provided more details and first reported that, contrary to expectations, the deal would not be signed by this week:

The sale of CK Hutchison’s two ports at each end of the Panama Canal was part of a US$23 billion deal to sell 43 ports spread over 23 countries to a consortium led by United States investment firm BlackRock. CK Hutchison will pocket US$19 billion.

[…] “We have noticed this transaction, and will review it in accordance with the law to ensure fair competition in the market and safeguard the public interest,” a spokesman from the anti-monopoly department under [China’s State Administration for Market Regulation] said in a written reply.

The watchdog did not reveal when the investigation would be launched but its response was later reposted on the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office website.

[…] Earlier on Friday, a source close to CK Hutchison said the conglomerate would not go ahead with the expected signing of the deal [this] Wednesday.

“There will not be an official signing of the two Panama ports deal next week,” a source close to CK Hutchison told the Post [last Friday].

April 2 was a deadline set for CK Hutchison and the BlackRock consortium to sign a definitive agreement over the deal for the two ports, according to an announcement of the sale on March 4. [Source]

The Chinese government signaled its opposition to the deal through the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office’s reposting of over half a dozen articles published by pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao that criticized the deal. The articles described the deal as being “in concert with US hegemony” and said it would lead to “historic mistakes”. On Saturday, the CCTV-linked Weibo account Yuyuantantian posted that the deal was “tantamount to handing a knife to an opponent,” but the post was deleted just minutes later. (See our recent explanation of “handing someone a knife” for more details on the phrase.) On Monday, Oiwan Lam at Global Voices described the criticism of CK Hutchison’s deal in these articles:

Hong Kong-based Chinese propaganda slammed CK Hutchison’s deal as a betrayal of the “motherland” through a series of commentaries which were republished on the website of Beijing’s top office on Hong Kong and Macau Affairs.

The patriotic opinion pieces were first published in China’s state-funded Ta Kung Pao on March 14. The first piece rejects CK Hutchison’s explanation that the deal was a purely commercial decision. It describes Blackrock’s role as an expanding US port operator that would repress China’s international trade upon taking over CK Hutchison’s port and concludes the deal was an act of betrayal:

[…] The second commentary praises other Hong Kong business leaders, including Henry Fok Ying-tung and Yue-kong Pao, for staying loyal to the party and, in particular, highlights Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei’s role in safeguarding the technological sovereignty of the Chinese telecommunication industry. It urges Chinese businessmen to safeguard China’s national interest. The third and fourth pieces were written in a similar manner, stressing the need for the business sector to serve national interest and demanding that CK Hutchison suspend the deal.

Pro-Beijing influencers also relay China’s discontent. @Hnbhger17, for example, argued on X that CK Hutchison should prioritize selling its port to Chinese corporations, or the deal would negatively impact China’s national security. [Source]

The issue of Li Ka-shing’s patriotism, or alleged lack thereof, has been the subject of heated debate by Chinese netizens, and many online articles and comments supportive of Li have been deleted by platform censors. CDT Chinese editors have archived ten recent essays and articles on the subject, at least three of which have since been censored. A now-deleted satirical essay from WeChat public account 捉刀漫谈max (Zhuōdāo màntán max, "Ghostwriter Chat max") posed the facetious question “How About If Li Ka-Shing Just Sells the Ports to Russia?” and mocked the blind nationalism of those urging Li to ignore business fundamentals and bend the knee to Beijing. An article by WeChat blogger Xu Peng noted the irony of those who would criticize Li for not being “patriotic” enough—despite his decades of generous donations to charitable causes in China—while conveniently overlooking nationalist pundit Sima Nan’s rather unpatriotic record of tax evasion. A now-censored article by science and current-affairs blogger Xiang Dongliang pointed out that CK Hutchison’s proposal only involves the sale of usage rights to the ports—because the ports themselves are under the sovereignty of the nations in which they are located—and that the company does not plan to sell the usage rights to any ports located in China or Hong Kong. Xiang argued that the proposed sale is motivated by CK Hutchison’s need to hedge economic and geopolitical risk, and that absent other Chinese buyers (who would be subject to the same challenges), it is only rational for the company to offload usage rights to the ports to American consortium BlackRock. If the Chinese government and online nationalists are genuinely concerned about port control falling into American hands, Xiang wrote, they should encourage so-called “patriotic” Chinese companies such as Huawei or Hongxing Erke to bid for the ports instead.

A selection of Weibo comments compiled by CDT Chinese editors gives some sense of the heated nationalist rhetoric on Chinese social media in response to Li Ka-shing and CK Hutchison’s plan. “Li Ka-shing’s ‘selling out the country for his own benefit’ deserves the contempt of every Chinese person,” fumed one Weibo user. "Those who insist on ‘short-selling’ their own motherland will disappear in the end!" wrote another. Some of the critical comments brushed aside arguments that the proposed sale was simply a sound business decision: “The interests of the nation and the people should always outrank individual benefit,” one Weibo user opined. “Businesspeople must not be solely profit-driven.”

While Beijing announced it was investigating CK Hutchison’s deal, legal experts said it could be difficult to prove a real risk of breaching China’s anti-monopoly laws. Alonso Illueca at the China-Global South Project described how the Chinese government might also resort to Hong Kong’s National Security Law in order to stop the deal:

In this case, articles 31 and 37 of the national security law allow for its application to companies. Although CK Hutchison is registered in the Cayman Islands and its owner, Li Kai-Shing, has moved most of its assets to Canada, both China and Hong Kong still retain some leverage.

There are reports of ongoing talks to find “a reasonable way out” of the current situation, accompanied by a pause in new collaborations between Chinese state-owned companies and CK Hutchison. Given the broad interpretation of “safeguarding national security,” the principle that guides the Hong Kong national security law, Beijing and Hong Kong could argue that the CK Hutchison-BlackRock deal threatens China’s national security and warrants intervention from the State to safeguard it.

Moreover, Ta Kung Pao called for applying China’s Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law against CK Hutchison, which allows Beijing to impose countermeasures on foreign entities that enforce sanctions or harm China’s interests and has advocated for punitive measures if the deal goes forward. The newspaper also invoked Hong Kong’s National Security Ordinance, further signaling potential legal challenges. [Source]

Many commentators highlighted the consequences should Beijing succeed in blocking CK Hutchison’s deal. Bryan Mercurio, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said “it would be an unprecedented move that could reinforce the claims of President Trump and others asserting that Hong Kong’s trade, finance and policies are not entirely independent from China.” Josh Lipsky, senior director at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, said, “Torpedoing the deal . . . would send shockwaves all around the financial world.” Commentator Xiang Dongliang noted the potentially chilling effects: “Global investors would conclude that there is no real difference between the government oversight of Hong Kong companies and mainland Chinese companies.” Sinocism’s Bill Bishop predicted, “Now that the PRC has made clear the national security concerns about [the] ports deal, all of their ports globally may be suspect. So they may block this deal, but expect pressure on PRC port holdings in other parts of the world now.”

In an article for Al Jazeera, Erin Hale described Li’s evolution from having close relations to Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, to his waning political influence under Xi Jinping, along with his gradual divestment away from China. The article references Kevin Yam as saying that “Beijing could use the deal to make an example of the Li family, much as it did to Alibaba founder Jack Ma.” (In 2020, Xi took the dramatic move to suspend the initial public offering of Ma’s Ant Group after Ma openly challenged government regulators.) A now-deleted article from Sina Finance highlighted the precarity of Li’s situation—and indeed that of all Chinese entrepreneurs—where national interests are at stake: “When capital collides with the contest between great powers, even the smartest entrepreneurs discover that they are just ordinary people—buffeted by the tides of history, or trapped between a rock and a hard place, and utterly unable to control their own destiny.”