When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) hosted entrepreneurs at a rare meeting in Beijing in 2018, the executives granted coveted front-row seats came from industries ranging from high-tech to energy, and few were familiar names.
Fast-forward seven years and that lineup has changed markedly as Beijing buckles down to navigate a deepening technology war with the US and celebrate powerful Chinese firms that have triumphed in the face of US pressure.
Xi on Monday mobilized to the frontlines a private-sector battalion that included the founders of electric vehicle maker BYD, tech giants Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi, as well as artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek.
Illustration: Mountain People
The firms, most of which are giants in their sectors and controversial abroad, are key to achieving Xi’s belief that “new productive forces” are needed for China to escape its middle-income trap, compete with the US and revitalize a stubbornly sluggish domestic economy, analysts said.
“The lineup of entrepreneurs suggests that Xi’s priority for the private sector is for it to support his goals of achieving technological self-reliance and supply-chain security,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow on Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.
Indeed, the global and domestic backdrop for this week’s meeting stood in stark contrast to the situation in 2018, when growth was still robust and the geopolitical landscape had not deteriorated to the present point, despite a trade dispute with US President Donald Trump during his first term.
By contrast, the symposium held that year drafted companies from across industries that included many smaller firms, such as software engineering firm Neusoft and vehicle parts manufacturer Wanxiang. Tencent and Baidu attended, according to local media, but were not given front-row seats.
“The mentality of the Chinese leadership has changed,” said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, head of The Conference Board’s China Center, a think tank.
“It’s a hard pill for them to swallow, but compared to 2018 they are now recognizing that these Chinese tech companies’ contribution to economic growth is greater than they previously believed,” he said.
In the highly choreographed meeting, Xi urged the tycoons to “show their talent,” and be confident in the power of China’s model and market, while ensuring that private companies could compete on equal terms with state-owned companies.
“The new lineup of entrepreneurs that Xi met with represent the cutting-edge technology that Beijing wants to see succeed to drive new economic growth,” said Paul Triolo, partner and technology policy lead for DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group.
Beijing has been focusing more on the private sector amid efforts to revive a struggling economy weighed down by a years-long property market slump and sluggish consumer spending.
The tech champions at Monday’s meeting suggest that Xi is rallying troops from the business sector to fight a geopolitical battle rather than to signal a strategic structural shift in the way the Chinese Communist Party manages the economy.
“It’s a recognition from the party leadership that despite their preference for a state-centric approach to the economy, private companies can play a major role in the realization of China’s strategic priorities, including vis-a-vis the building of technological self-reliance, and the party intends to leverage this to innovate itself free from export controls and tech restrictions,” Montufar-Helu said.
The seating of executives at such key meetings is seen as illustrating companies’ standing. Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei (任正非) and BYD’s Wang Chuanfu (王傳福) sat opposite Xi.
Alibaba’s Jack Ma (馬雲) and Tencent’s Pony Ma (馬化騰), among the biggest targets of Beijing’s previous private-sector crackdown, were also seated in the front row. Wang Xing (王興), founder of China’s largest delivery platform, Meituan, sat in the second row.
The presence of Alibaba’s Ma, who shook hands with Xi, was seen by many as the rehabilitation of a tech leader who largely withdrew from public life after authorities halted the initial public offering of his fintech company Ant Group in 2020.
Another notable face was Liang Wenfeng (梁文鋒), founder of DeepSeek, whose rapid rise has sent shock waves through global markets since it unveiled a new artificial intelligence model last month.
Underscoring Xi’s commitment to private enterprises, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee is due to table a draft of a private economy promotion law at a meeting scheduled on Monday and Tuesday next week.
It is expected to pass.
The legislation aims to create a legal environment that ensures equal treatment and protection of private companies.
“The symposium and the ‘private economy promotion law’ will have a positive impact on private-sector confidence, but to sustain its impact, a more forceful fiscal and monetary stimulus policy ... is also required to pull China’s economy out of the current deflationary spiral,” said Zhu Tian (朱天), a professor at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.
Markets have cheered the meeting as a signal that private enterprise would be treated kindly and that the crackdown on tech giants is over. However, previous disappointments are fresh in investors’ minds and a brake on outright exuberance.
“We think President Xi’s support for innovation industries, ongoing macro policy support, operating performance and other fundamental improvements will be crucial drivers of the China tech sector’s outperformance against the broader market from here,” analysts at UBS Wealth Management said in a note to clients.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index touched a three-year peak on Tuesday, while shares in Alibaba rose 2 percent after China Central Television showed Xi shaking hands with founder Jack Ma.
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
As an American living in Taiwan, I have to confess how impressed I have been over the years by the Chinese Communist Party’s wholehearted embrace of high-speed rail and electric vehicles, and this at a time when my own democratic country has chosen a leader openly committed to doing everything in his power to put obstacles in the way of sustainable energy across the board — and democracy to boot. It really does make me wonder: “Are those of us right who hold that democracy is the right way to go?” Has Taiwan made the wrong choice? Many in China obviously
US President Donald Trump last week announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on eight countries. As Taiwan, a key hub for semiconductor manufacturing, is among them, the policy would significantly affect the country. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) dispatched two officials to the US for negotiations, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) board of directors convened its first-ever meeting in the US. Those developments highlight how the US’ unstable trade policies are posing a growing threat to Taiwan. Can the US truly gain an advantage in chip manufacturing by reversing trade liberalization? Is it realistic to
About 6.1 million couples tied the knot last year, down from 7.28 million in 2023 — a drop of more than 20 percent, data from the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs showed. That is more serious than the precipitous drop of 12.2 percent in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the saying goes, a single leaf reveals an entire autumn. The decline in marriages reveals problems in China’s economic development, painting a dismal picture of the nation’s future. A giant question mark hangs over economic data that Beijing releases due to a lack of clarity, freedom of the press
RSS