Hong Kong’s richest man is caught between China and America
TO HONG KONGERS, Li Ka-shing is a 97-year-old “Superman”, the tycoon who can turn any crisis into a business opportunity. To pro-Beijing media in the city he is the “Cockroach King”, a traitor who spurns his “patriotic” duties. And Donald Trump seems to consider him an agent of Chinese imperialism: a facilitator for the “soldiers” who are “lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal”, the American president insists.
Mr Li has amassed a $37bn fortune by walking a tightrope between East and West. But recently Hong Kong’s richest resident has risked a heavy fall. He founded CK Hutchison (CKH), a conglomerate he handed to his son, Victor, in 2018, but still advises and which his family is the biggest shareholder in. It operates, among other things, a vast network of ports—including the two at either end of the Panama Canal, a waterway that handles around 5% of global maritime trade. That has made him a target for Mr Trump, who seems to think that CKH’s involvement means “China operates the Panama Canal”. (In fact Panama does, after regaining full control from America in 1999.)
Mr Trump has demanded that America “take back” the canal and refused to rule out military intervention. Amid rising tensions, a consortium led by BlackRock, an American investment firm, announced in March that it would buy the two ports and 41 others operated by CKH for $23bn. Ta Kung Pao, a pro-China, Hong Kong-based newspaper, decried Mr Li’s “spineless grovelling” that “sold out all Chinese people”, in a commentary that was reposted by China’s top Hong Kong office. The mainland’s anti-trust regulator said the deal should not proceed without its consent. Insiders say it is still on, though CKH missed a target of signing a definitive agreement by April 2nd. China has also reportedly ordered state-owned enterprises to halt any new business deals with Mr Li or his family.
It is not the first time Mr Li has faced challenges. He was a wartime refugee, fleeing southern China with his family in 1940 at the age of 12. His father died shortly after, forcing him out of school and into work at a plastics factory. He scraped together enough money to start his own company, Cheung Kong Industries, in 1950. It sold vast quantities of plastic flowers to America. Mr Li was rich by the time protests against British rule convulsed Hong Kong in 1967; he capitalised on the slumping property prices to buy swathes of the city. When it recovered, he made a fortune.
Mr Li likes to seem humble, often pointing out that he still wears cheap Seiko watches. In a 1998 documentary he recounts getting to his knees to pick up a penny that had rolled beneath his car. “Money must never be squandered,” he says. But Joe Studwell, an author, tells a different origin story. Mr Li started Cheung Kong with the help of money from his wife’s family. Some of his employees seem unconvinced by his self-professed modesty. “That fucking watch,” one executive grumbled to an interviewer.
But few deny Mr Li’s business nous. In the 1970s he listed Cheung Kong and acquired Hutchison Whampoa, then Hong Kong’s second-biggest conglomerate, making him the first Chinese owner of a long-established British trading house. He invested in everything from utilities to telecoms, and expanded abroad more than any other local tycoon. In 2023 CKH generated more than half its revenue from Britain, Canada and Europe, while under a fifth came from Hong Kong and the mainland.
Mr Li was also one of the first outsiders to invest in China after it opened up in 1978. For years the country’s officials touted him as a hero of private enterprise. But his relationship to his motherland has since become complicated. In the early 2010s he sold many high-profile Chinese assets, which party bigwigs took as a sign of his waning confidence in the economy. State media accused him of profiteering off China, then abandoning it. In 2019 Mr Li called for authorities to show restraint amid Hong Kong’s widespread pro-democracy protests. Chinese officials saw that as a tacit endorsement of the movement.
Mr Li’s willingness to defy China’s government has not helped Mr Trump’s view of CKH. Since a crackdown on dissent began in the territory in 2020, America has increasingly treated Hong Kong businesses as Chinese. It revoked Hong Kong’s special trading status that year. CKH has come under increased scrutiny elsewhere too. Iain Duncan Smith, a British Conservative politician, has questioned whether CKH should be allowed to acquire Thames Water, a struggling utility for which it bid £7bn ($9.3bn) in February.
Mr Li will find it difficult to avoid being drawn further into the deepening rivalry between China and America. His companies, and others based in Hong Kong, may come under increasing pressure to align with China’s national-security interests. He could still pull off the Panama ports deal, reinforcing his “Superman” reputation. But it also could prove to be his Kryptonite. ■