The deal had the imprint of a Hong Kong billionaire nicknamed “Superman” for his empire building. One of the tycoon’s companies, which for years has run two ports on the Panama Canal, had been thrust into a broader showdown between China and the United States.
So the billionaire, Li Ka-shing, got out of the firing line by notching a $19 billion deal to sell the business to a group of deep-pocketed American investors.
Or so it seemed.
China’s leaders are now threatening to stop Mr. Li and the company he controls, CK Hutchison, from seeing the deal through, accusing the conglomerate of betraying Beijing.
The face-off tests how far Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, is willing to go to exercise his control over business in Hong Kong.
A former British colony, Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997 with Beijing’s promise it would mostly leave the city to govern itself, allowing it to remain a bridge to China but keep a system of freewheeling capitalism. Mr. Li, as a Chinese entrepreneur who tapped investors in the West to build an empire that included property, shipping and telecommunications, embodied that distinction.
Beijing’s potential intervention in the port deal between CK Hutchison and a group led by BlackRock now endangers the separation, prominent financiers and business leaders in Hong Kong said. It could also destroy Mr. Xi’s golden goose at a critical moment for China’s economy.
After recording losses in four of the past five years, Hong Kong’s stock market is on fire — a sign of enthusiasm for China’s economy. Chinese companies are choosing Hong Kong over London or New York to list their shares. It offers Mr. Xi a bragging point: Since President Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, the S&P 500 has fallen about 5 percent while Hong Kong’s stock market is up more than 20 percent.
Lawyers and regulatory experts generally believe that the authorities in Hong Kong or Beijing will be reluctant to stop the deal — and it is not clear that there is much they can do. But the mere possibility has put Hong Kong on edge. Beijing and its proxies in the media have kept up a near-daily drumbeat of criticism.
Commentaries last week in Ta Kung Pao, a newspaper owned by the Chinese government, called the agreement between CK Hutchison and BlackRock “profit seeking and unrighteous” and a matter of “national security.” The Beijing government agency that overseas Hong Kong policy reposted the comments on its website. On Tuesday, Hong Kong’s top leader, John Lee, piled on to say the deal required “serious attention.”
Hu Xijin, a former editor of the Communist Party tabloid Global Times, said CK Hutchison “first needs to be calm and coordinate with China’s national interests.”
Any attempt by Hong Kong or Beijing to stop the deal would be extraordinary. Chinese companies must often seek permission from regulators to move their money out of mainland China. CK Hutchison operates ports worldwide, including in China, but none of the 43 ports that are part of the BlackRock deal are in China. CK Hutchison’s shares are not listed in mainland China.
CK Hutchison declined to comment. BlackRock did not respond to a request for comment.
Victor Li, the chairman of CK Hutchison (and son of Li Ka-shing), said on Thursday in a statement accompanying an earnings release that the environment for CK Hutchison’s businesses could be “both volatile and unpredictable” this year.
The scorn and warnings heaped on CK Hutchison are reminiscent of “Cultural Revolution-style criticism” that will scare off foreign investors, said Lew Mong-hung, a former Chinese political adviser.
“Who would dare to come to Hong Kong?” said Mr. Lew, a former finance professional. “If you don’t obey, don’t want to make a political sacrifice and don’t want to be a political tool, you will be criticized and persecuted. Who will come to invest?”
Chan King Cheung, a professor of media ethics at Hong Kong Baptist University and a former chief editor of the Hong Kong Economic Journal, wrote in a Hong Kong newspaper this week that the increasing intervention by Beijing in the city’s business community — through comments and visits made by Chinese officials to pressure business leaders to be patriotic — was a sign that it was getting harder to detach Hong Kong companies from Chinese politics.
The attention Beijing has put on the Panama Canal deal was just another example that “‘great’ entrepreneurs must be patriots,” Mr. Chan wrote. “It has been proven that the days when Hong Kong companies considered issues purely based on economic or commercial interests are over,” he added.
The concern among business leaders cuts to the heart of the question facing Hong Kong: Are its companies free to make their own business decisions, or must they consider China’s broader national interests as do mainland Chinese firms?
For many, the answer will determine whether Hong Kong can still operate separately from the rest of China. Hong Kong’s autonomy in free speech and civil society has already been eroded after the shutdown of local media outlets; the arrest of Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong newspaper publisher; and the arrests and trials of dozens of pro-democracy leaders.
“It’s one thing to go after Jimmy Lai and Apple Daily, but quite another to go after ‘Superman’ KS Li and his companies, the most successful international business H.K. has ever produced,” said Mark L. Clifford, a former board member at Mr. Lai’s Next Digital and president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong.
To Beijing and its supporters, the Trump administration has already politicized business transactions, thwarting investment and imposing tariffs in the name of national security. In an opinion article, Mr. Hu, the former Chinese tabloid editor, argued that former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. also did this when his administration stopped a deal between Japan’s Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel.
Beijing has reason to be concerned, he added. The Trump administration “wants to use the ports to charge extra fees to Chinese ships arriving at the port and hit China’s shipbuilding and shipping industries.”
Others argued that China’s condemnation of CK Hutchison for supposedly not acting in China’s national interests has effectively ratified Mr. Trump’s original claim that the company was controlled by China.
“China’s reaction to the deal implicitly concedes the Trump administration’s point that control of major ports, here just the Panama Canal, constitutes a security threat to the United States,” said Lester Ross, the partner in charge of the Beijing office of the law firm Wilmer Hale.
“It may also bring the Hong Kong business community as a whole even more tightly under Beijing’s thumb.”
