Hong Kong will never succeed under China, Trump says

The US President Donald Trump said Thursday that Hong Kong’s global financial center will “go to hell” under tightened Chinese rule.

“Hong Kong can never succeed having China as opposed to the thousands of geniuses that ran it, having China run it,” Trump told Fox Business news, AFP reports. “The Hong Kong markets will go to hell. Nobody’s going to do business.”

Trump announced in May that he was ending the special US trading relationship with Hong Kong in retaliation for Beijing’s clampdown on the previously largely autonomous territory.

Trump told Fox Business that the end to the special status meant that Hong Kong would lose its ability to attract business and serve as one of the world’s chief financial hubs, along with New York and London.

Trump said he had approved of the longstanding relationship, which amounted to a “tremendous amount of money in the form of incentives to make Hong Kong free.”

But “once China got aggressive and took it over, I took everything back. Everything’s back now and it will fail,” he said.