Stocks in Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison tumbled Friday after Chinese officials overseeing the city reposted a newspaper opinion piece blasting the sale of its lucrative Panama Canal ports following pressure from Donald Trump.
The president has complained that China controls the vital waterway and the U.S. was overpaying to use it, even refusing to rule out a military invasion of Panama to regain control.
Last week, the business empire built by Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-shing sold its port operators business, including those in the canal, in a $22.8 billion deal with a US-led consortium, saying it was purely commercial and unrelated to recent political news.
But the Hong Kong and Macao Work Office on Thursday republished in full a newspaper op-ed that demanded the firm choose “which side it stands on”.
“Trump and the U.S. did not treat this transaction as a normal commercial move and blatantly interfered, using it to spread global hegemony,” said the article, first published in Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Pao earlier that day.
“The U.S. will definitely use (the Canal) to push a political agenda, and Chinese shipping trade there is set to be constrained.”
The article said it was understandable for internet users to lambast the deal as “spineless kowtowing”, “putting profit above all”, “ignoring national interests… and betraying and selling out all Chinese people.”
A company facing such a major decision should think hard and “decide what its position is, and which side it stands on”, the article concluded.
The firm’s shares plunged 6.70 percent in Hong Kong morning trade. It had soared more than 20 percent after the sale was announced.
AFP has contacted CK Hutchison for comment.
Ta Kung Pao is owned by a subsidiary of Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong.
For months, Trump has fixated on control over shipping in the Panama Canal, which was built by the United States more than a century ago to link the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It was handed over to Panama in 1999.
The U.S. president had repeatedly threatened to “take back” the canal, which he said was operated by China.
Before the sale, CK Hutchison’s subsidiary in Panama had managed two of the five ports at the canal—one on the Cristobal side and the other on the Balboa side—via a government concession since 1997.
CK Hutchison Holdings is one of Hong Kong’s largest conglomerates, spanning finance, retail, infrastructure, telecoms and logistics.
The Hong Kong government earlier said it “never interfered in the commercial operation of Hong Kong companies.”
