Hong Kong tycoon bets China will overtake US economy ‘in next decade or so’

Hong Kong property tycoon Gordon Wu Ying-sheung has predicted that China will overtake the US as the world’s largest economy in the next decade or so, propelled by rapid technological advances while Washington is weighed down by massive defence expenditure and national debt. Yet the 90-year-old founder and chairman of Hopewell Holdings, who rarely speaks to the press, said Hong Kong should look past geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington to build closer ties with the United States, leveraging the city’s role as a premier trading hub to attract highly fluid American private wealth. Speaking to the South China Morning Post, the Princeton-educated civil engineer – dubbed the “King of Highways” for building China’s first toll road and later a 380km (236 miles) network across the mainland – outlined a pragmatic view of the nation’s economic trajectory. He predicted that in “a decade or so”, China would overtake the US to become the world’s biggest economy, saying that Washington’s US$39 trillion national debt and the proposed record defence budget of US$1.5 trillion were its “Achilles’ heel”. “How can you keep on spending like this? Throughout history, countries that spend money on war will go bankrupt. That’s why I believe that China, which spends much less money on defence, will prosper,” he said. “I predict it will take a decade or so [for China] to overtake the US.” Wu said technological advancement propelled Britain to global economic dominance during the Industrial Revolution, followed by the US, before rising production costs shifted manufacturing hubs to Japan and the four “Asian tigers” in recent decades. “China has some capital, a lot of technology, a lot of ideas. The people have the willingness to work for much less than the Americans, and they are bound to be successful,” he said. China’s government debt stood at 101 trillion yuan (US$14.75 trillion) while its defence budget was 1.91 trillion yuan for 2026. Wu is among the handful of Hong Kong real estate magnates born in the 1920s and 30s alongside Li Ka-shing, Lee Shau-kee and Cheng Yu-tung. He has deep ties to both mainland China and the US, and remains active in business today. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Wu later studied in the US and graduated with a degree in civil engineering from Princeton University in 1958. He named his company Hopewell after a small historic town near his university in New Jersey. Later this month, Wu will receive the “Game Changer Award” from the Asia Society Hong Kong in recognition of his courage and foresight as a pioneer in transforming the mainland landscape through landmark projects including the China Hotel in Guangzhou. Construction of the hotel began just two years after economic reforms started opening up the country in 1978. It became the mainland’s first major foreign-funded and foreign-managed enterprise, helping build Western confidence in China. Wu’s faith in China’s economic trajectory is rooted in decades of experience on the mainland, spanning the period from reform and opening up to Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty. From 1978, he began persuading mainland officials to approve construction of China’s first toll superhighway, a 123km route linking Hong Kong’s boundary with Shenzhen and Guangzhou under a build-operate-transfer model. Hopewell partnered with mainland authorities to fund and construct the highway at an initial cost of HK$2.4 billion in exchange for the exclusive right to operate and collect tolls for a specified franchise period. Wu vividly recalled meeting then premier Zhao Ziyang about the project. “When I talked to Premier Zhao Ziyang about superhighways, an official told me at that time: ‘To be honest, we can’t even afford a bicycle’,” he said. “I told him: ‘But if you don’t improve your transport, if you don’t build your highways, you’ll never be able to own a bicycle.’” He added: “They were doubtful, but they gave it a try. Once they saw the benefits, look at what happened. They have the largest superhighway system in the world. They have the best high-speed trains in the world.” Wu’s foresight earned him deep trust from Beijing officials. Zhao famously told him that “China didn’t just need to import your capital, but more importantly your brain”. Then vice-premier Gu Mu, on a separate occasion, praised him as a “knowledgeable industrialist with exceptional organisational capabilities”. Despite long-standing rivalry between the superpowers, Wu told the SCMP that he was optimistic that relations would stabilise following the recent summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. “It would not be in America’s interest to have open confrontation with China,” he said. Ties between Hong Kong and the US have frayed since the national security law enacted in 2020 sparked concerns among the foreign business community. The number of American companies with regional headquarters in Hong Kong has continued to fall in recent years, from 282 in 2020 to 200 last year. Wu said Hong Kong could not afford to alienate US investors and should do better at maintaining ties with them, pointing to the vast, highly fluid private wealth accumulated by Americans over the past century after the Civil War. “We’ve got to respect that these are the people who really have a lot of capital,” he said, noting that Hong Kong’s institutional stability remained a selling point against the unpredictability often associated with the Trump administration. “We must know that their movements are fast – they come in and out very quickly. For any economy, you need capital, so Hong Kong can be a good trading centre in terms of a capital centre.” Wu said Hong Kong must aggressively pivot into the high-technology sector to thrive rather than relying on its traditional real estate and financial pillars. “A lot of that depends on the young people receiving that education and the technology,” he said. “Once you get the basic knowledge, and then use your brains and develop from here. That’s what Hong Kong needs.” Sixty-three years after co-founding Hopewell Construction with his father, Wu remains active at 90 in managing his property empire. Wu shared his secret to keep his mind sharp at work: “I listen to classical music at least 10 hours every day while working in my office – a habit I’ve built since my teenage years. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven … I listen to them every day. I only find a workday tough if there is no music.”

Hong Kong tycoon bets China will overtake US economy ‘in next decade or so’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Hopewell founder Gordon Wu says city must leverage its role as a premier trading hub to attract highly fluid American private wealth

Hopewell founder Gordon Wu says city must leverage its role as a premier trading hub to attract highly fluid American private wealth