China’s president, Xi Jinping, recently met with some of the country’s leading business figures, including Alibaba founder Jack Ma, in a bid to address the country’s economic slump. Xi’s meeting included Ma, who was at the center of a crackdown on the tech sector, as well as executives from BYD, CATL, Tencent, Xiaomi, and Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei.
Xi attended a symposium on private enterprises, where he delivered a speech, though the details of his remarks were not disclosed. Xi has led initiatives to increase government oversight of private industries, especially in tech, which had previously expanded rapidly without much concern for government regulations. However, China is now grappling with an economic downturn caused by a housing crisis, low consumption, and high youth unemployment.
The meeting took place at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, with state broadcaster CCTV airing footage on Monday that showed Ma applauding as Xi entered. Xi, Ren, and BYD’s Wang Chuanfu were filmed giving speeches, but no audio or transcripts were released. Liang Wenfeng, founder of the AI startup DeepSeek, which is disrupting the tech industry, also attended.
The participation of high-profile business leaders at such events is often seen by foreign investors as an indication of the companies or individuals favored by the government. The meeting with Ma drew particular attention, as he was once a high-profile target of regulatory crackdowns and had disappeared from public view for several months after a 2020 speech in which he criticized Xi.
Investors were closely analyzing images and videos from the meeting, adjusting their trading decisions accordingly. Notably, executives from Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, and Baidu, a major player in search and AI, were absent. Baidu’s shares dropped by over 8% — the biggest loss on the Hang Seng index — due to the absence of a top executive. However, news of Xi’s attendance at the symposium, which emerged on Friday, fueled optimism in Asian markets as it suggested possible renewed support for China’s private tech sector, which has faced repeated government crackdowns in recent years.
Trivium, a China-focused analytics firm, described the meeting as “high stakes” and pointed out that a similar meeting in 2018 preceded Xi’s multi-year crackdown on the private sector. The firm stated, “If Xi can convince attendees (and the markets) that he is now pro-business, it will go a long way to rousing animal spirits and putting the economy on a better trajectory. But if Xi uses the symposium to emphasise that private companies prosper at the will of the state, it could tank sentiment even further.”