Zichen Wang on CK Hutchinson's port operations in Panama at CNBC

If China struggled to secure a visit for its research ship at Hambantota in Sri Lanka, where a Chinese SOE had a 70% stake in a 99-year lease, how could an HK firm damage U.S. security?

Zichen Wang, Research Fellow and Director for International Communications at the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), on July 29, 2025 told Emily Tan of The China Connection live on CNBC that U.S. concerns about CK Hutchison's port operations in the Panama Canal and many U.S. arguments made against the Chinese lease of port operations are exaggerated.

The following transcript has been slightly edited.

Emily Tan:

Zichen, we know that the CK Hutchison has been managing the port, not controling the canal. CK Hutchison, formerly known as Cheung Kong Holdings, since 1997, was operating those ports of Cristobal and Balboa. These are the two Panama ports in question. Now my question to you is that, you know the fact that CK Hutchison wants to sell all of its ports except its China and Hong Kong ports. What is that telling you?

Zichen Wang:

Apart from the unsubstantiated claims made by the U.S. President, there is a larger sense of urgency, or fear, of the so-called Chinese operating port interests in Latin America and even across the globe. And their concern was based on the theory that the Hong Kong firm could be under Chinese government influence. But the very fact that CK Hutchison apparently decided to sell those ports without consultation with Beijing showed that they were totally operating under their own commercial interests.

Only after they made the decision and the decision was announced in public, Beijing was apparently caught flat-footed and then intervened. So my understanding, my analysis of the sequence shows that Li Ka-shing and his CK Hutchison were making a business decision in response to huge geopolitical pressure from the United States when he made the decision.

So I think that's actually proved that U.S. concerns, whether from the US strategic communities, including think tanks and US politicians, were not grounded in facts.

Emily Tan:

But China is not helping itself with the fact that, through People's Daily and various other media reports, it's criticizing the deal, calling CK Hutchison a sell-out of national interests. This is despite the fact that the transaction excludes the mainland and Hong Kong ports, the fact that with this criticism, is it a little bit surprising to you that it has nothing to do with national security because China does not control the ports? But by them saying this, does it make people think otherwise?

Zichen Wang:

I think it's better to be seen as some sort of self-defence, because it was the U.S. that imposed the economic coercion in the first place.

And also in this very intense China-U.S. competition as I described a bit earlier, and if you really went back to the initial press commentaries in Hong Kong, in for example Ta Kung Pao, there were like theories floated by Chinese commentators which were basically saying if all those 41 ports fell into U.S.-led consortium, would the US be able to exert further pressure on other countries to damage Chinese shipping interests?

So what I see is a Chinese response. And based on the latest press reports, I think it's a measured response. For example, yesterday, the Financial Times reported that Cosco was one option for the proposed deal, and that Cosco would take a stake in the sold ports but not in those two particular ports at both ends of the canal. I think if that exclusive report was true, then that means that the Chinese were still reasonable in trying to assure some of the U.S. concerns despite that they were not grounded in facts.

Emily Tan:

So now we have this name: China Cosco. This is a state-owned enterprise; this is a ports operator. And if it is then, of course, joining the consortium, which includes BlackRock—that's a U.S. company—and MSC, which is Mediterranean Shipping Company which would represent Europe or the EU. So you got China, the U.S. and EU, would you say this would be a better representation to be controling the Panama ports?

Zichen Wang:

I think in an ideal world we shouldn't point to, oh this is the representative of the United States or China or Europe, but unfortunately, we are in this reality.

But in fact, the operating of these ports, as you described earlier, is not equivalent to controlling the canal. I mean, the ships can choose to dock at a certain port, and the port operators are merely providing services for them. Whether a port receives a commercial ship or bars that particular ship, that's ultimately the decision of the sovereign nation which hosts these ports.

I think we can have a closer example in Sri Lanka in Asia, which is much closer to us. There is another Chinese state-owned company, China Merchants Port, which leases, I think, 70% of the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka for 99 years. And for quite a few years, that port and Sri Lanka was used by the Western narrative as the poster boy of China's so-called debt-trap influence. But when a Chinese research vessel--Yuan Wang 5--wanted to merely dock at the port in 2022, Sri Lanka received a huge pushback from India and from the United States, and delayed the Chinese ship's docking at the port. Only after Chinese engagements and interactions was the Chinese research ship allowed to dock at the port, and it was ordered to close all the relevant equipment.

And soon after that ship's visit, Sri Lanka announced a one-yer ban on all foreign research ships, so effectively shutting down all Chinese research ship visits in the following year.

So, that was a Chinese-majority, SOE-controlled port with a 99-year lease, and it was used as a poster boy of Chinese influence. Sri Lanka is much closer to China than to the United States. Theoretically, it is under much closer Chinese influence. But even in that situation, the sovereign nation made the decision to allow or ban a foreign research ship from docking.

So my takeaway from that story and for all these discussions is that whether a commercial operator operating the ports providing services for commercial ships, that has been unfortunately exaggerated to a sovereign state influence that could threaten the national interest of the United States at its backyard.

It's just so overblown and this is very unfortunate. It creates a lot of turbulence and uncertainties for these money-making commercial entities that otherwise could just do their business.

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