The news surprised everyone. On March 4, a few weeks after a tirade by the American president, Donald Trump, calling for an end to a supposed Chinese grip on the Panama Canal, the Hong Kong group CK Hutchison declared that it has given way to a consortium led by the American active manager Blackrock most of his port activities.
A heritage worth $ 22.8 billion (21.5 billion euros), including two particularly strategic ports, those of Balboa and Cristobal, arranged at each end of the Panama Canal, and which he has controlled since 1997.
Even if the ships using the canal do not have to stop in these ports, many investors wondered how such an agreement could well have obtained the downstream of Beijing. But Beijing would probably not even have been made aware. This is what we understand when reading a long comment published on Thursday March 13, in the Hong Kong daily Your kung paodeemed aligned with the official Chinese position. This same text was then distributed in its entirety on the website of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Bureau of the Council for State Affairs, a sign of its support by the Chinese central government.
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