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.
There are moments in history when America has turned its back on its principles and withdrawn from past commitments in service of higher goals. For example, US-Soviet Cold War competition compelled America to make a range of deals with unsavory and undemocratic figures across Latin America and Africa in service of geostrategic aims. The United States overlooked mass atrocities against the Bengali population in modern-day Bangladesh in the early 1970s in service of its tilt toward Pakistan, a relationship the Nixon administration deemed critical to its larger aims in developing relations with China. Then, of course, America switched diplomatic recognition
The international women’s soccer match between Taiwan and New Zealand at the Kaohsiung Nanzih Football Stadium, scheduled for Tuesday last week, was canceled at the last minute amid safety concerns over poor field conditions raised by the visiting team. The Football Ferns, as New Zealand’s women’s soccer team are known, had arrived in Taiwan one week earlier to prepare and soon raised their concerns. Efforts were made to improve the field, but the replacement patches of grass could not grow fast enough. The Football Ferns canceled the closed-door training match and then days later, the main event against Team Taiwan. The safety
The National Immigration Agency on Tuesday said it had notified some naturalized citizens from China that they still had to renounce their People’s Republic of China (PRC) citizenship. They must provide proof that they have canceled their household registration in China within three months of the receipt of the notice. If they do not, the agency said it would cancel their household registration in Taiwan. Chinese are required to give up their PRC citizenship and household registration to become Republic of China (ROC) nationals, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. He was referring to Article 9-1 of the Act
Strategic thinker Carl von Clausewitz has said that “war is politics by other means,” while investment guru Warren Buffett has said that “tariffs are an act of war.” Both aphorisms apply to China, which has long been engaged in a multifront political, economic and informational war against the US and the rest of the West. Kinetically also, China has launched the early stages of actual global conflict with its threats and aggressive moves against Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan, and its support for North Korea’s reckless actions against South Korea that could reignite the Korean War. Former US presidents Barack Obama
RSS