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China has criticised the sale of the business that controls ports in Panama to US investors, saying the Hong Kong-based parent company should “think twice” and that the $22.8bn deal is “power politics” that is not in the country’s national interest.
Shares in the Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison fell more than 6% on Friday after a critical commentary appeared in the Beijing-backed newspaper Ta Kung Pao in Hong Kong.
Last week, CK Hutchison struck a deal to sell a majority stake in Panama Ports Company, which holds the contract to run the ports of Balboa and Cristóbal until 2047, to a consortium led by the US financial giant BlackRock.
The move followed pressure from Donald Trump to end what he sees as China’s influence and control over the key trading route through the Panama canal.
On Friday, China used the strongly worded commentary in Ta Kung Pao to attack the US for pressuring the deal “through despicable means”.
“[Critics] say this is a spineless, grovelling, profit-seeking move that sells one’s integrity for personal gains,” said the opinion piece. “And an act that disregards national interests … [which] betrays and sells out all Chinese people.”
The opinion piece said the sale would result in China’s shipping and trade being curbed by the US, and that CK Hutchison should “think twice” about “what position and side they are on”.
After publication of the commentary, China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO), the governing body overseeing the territory, reposted the article on its website, prompting investor fears that the deal may not complete without Beijing’s backing.
BlackRock’s Panama Ports move is part of a wider deal for Hutchison Ports’ global business that would give the US-led group control of 43 ports in 23 countries.
“It is power politics packaged as a ‘business behaviour’,” stated the opinion piece. “This deal is an act of hegemony by the US, which uses its state power to infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of other countries through despicable means such as coercion, pressure and inducement.”
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, visited Panama City in February to meet the Panamanian president, José Raúl Mulino.
After the meeting, he said that “control of the Chinese Communist party over the Panama canal” was unacceptable and the US would use “measures necessary to protect its rights”.
CK Hutchison has insisted the deal is unrelated to Trump’s vow to “take back” the canal.
“I would like to stress that the transaction is purely commercial in nature and wholly unrelated to recent political news reports concerning the Panama Ports,” said Frank Sixt, the co-managing director of CK Hutchison. “[The sale] was the result of a rapid, discrete but competitive process in which numerous bids and expressions of interest were received.”
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While CK Hutchison is in a 145-day exclusive negotiation period with the BlackRock consortium, the deal has not yet been finalised.
On Thursday, it emerged that the Trump administration had called on the Pentagon to provide military options to ensure the US had full access to the Panama canal.
One US official said a document, described as interim national security guidance by the Trump administration, has asked the military to look at options to ensure “unfettered” access to the canal.
The US government has also proposed steep levies of up to $1.5m (£1.2m) for each port of call on Chinese-made ships coming to the US, as part of a plan to bring more ship manufacturing back to America.
Mainland China and Hong Kong accounted for nearly 14% of CK Hutchison’s revenues in 2023, compared with about half from UK and European operations.
CK Hutchison, which is controlled by the billionaire Li Ka-shing, has always maintained that its business operations are independent of China, which took control of Hong Kong from the UK in 1997.
In the UK, CK Hutchison is in the process of merging its mobile business 3 with Vodafone.
