Chinese leader Xi Jinping hosted Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma and the country’s top tech executives in Beijing on Monday, in a meeting that signals officials could be steering the country in a more business-friendly direction after a yearslong regulatory crackdown.
Besides Ma, the other tycoons in attendance included Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu, CATL CEO Zeng Yuqun and Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun, according to a report from state broadcaster CCTV.
The symposium on private business comes just weeks after Chinese startup DeepSeek’s latest AI model roiled global stock markets and AI players by delivering comparable performance to US-based industry behemoths at significantly lower cost. Its success has also brought optimism to China’s tech sector, which is still recovering after a severe regulatory crackdown lasting more than three years.
That campaign was sparked in late 2020 after Ma blasted Chinese financial regulators and banks in a landmark speech. His blistering criticism set off the most widespread regulatory crackdown in the history of corporate China, which affected the fortunes of other tech giants including Tencent, ride-hailing Didi and food-delivery Meituan. Since then, Ma, the formerly outspoken founder, has largely vanished from public view.
His high-profile attendance at the meeting with Xi suggests authorities are finally moving past its crackdown as concerns about his business empire have largely been resolved, according to Angela Huyue Zhang, a law professor at the University of Southern California who wrote a book about China’s regulation of tech firms.
“With the domestic economy slowing and geopolitical pressures escalating, the government is making it clear that it values and relies on the private sector to drive innovation and stimulate growth,” she told CNN.
The timing of this meeting is significant as it signals “renewed effort to support private enterprise, especially in the tech sector, and to restore entrepreneurial confidence,” she added.
On Friday, the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index, which tracks key Chinese companies, rose to its highest-level since early 2022, after news about the upcoming symposium was first reported by Reuters. It was last trading about 1% lower on Monday.
A powerful group
The world’s second-largest economy is struggling against the backdrop of an increasingly hawkish international environment amid growing US-China trade tensions. Instead of a quick recovery after Beijing relaxed its stringent pandemic restrictions in late 2022, the economy has floundered, weighed down by its ailing property sector and low consumer confidence.
Since then, the authorities have repeatedly sought to fire up the private sector, a group that has grown concerned about Beijing’s increasingly statist approach. Private businesses contribute more than 60% to China’s gross domestic product and over 80% of employment, despite being dwarfed by the state sector in size.
Xi’s meeting with private entrepreneurs “clearly represents a major course correction” in China’s policies towards private businesses, Fred Hu, chairman of investment firm Primavera Capital, told Reuters.
“The private sector, long the backbone of the Chinese economy and the most important growth engine, has been battered in recent years by mounting policy and regulatory uncertainties, with dire consequences to China’s economy, and worse, to its labor market with rising youth unemployment,” he said.
China’s crackdown on private enterprise had wiped out more than $1 trillion in market value for many powerful Chinese companies and stoked fears about the future of innovation.
In the summer of 2021, regulators announced curbs on the for-profit education industry and its food delivery sector. Even though the campaign appeared to have come to an end more than a year ago, some tycoons were still rattled and not expanding their businesses with their previous flourish.
This story has been updated with additional information and context.
Correction: This story misstated the inclusion of Baidu CEO Robin Li.
