Chinese president holds rare meeting with tech and business leaders, promises to remove obstacles
BEIJING – President Xi Jinping held a rare meeting on Monday with some of the biggest names in China’s technology sector, urging them to “show their talent” and be confident in the power of China’s model and market.
Wang Huning, head of China’s top political advisory body, chaired the symposium, which was also attended by Premier Li Qiang and Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang.
A short video of the symposium showed Ren Zhengfei, the founder and CEO of Huawei Technologies, Wang Chuanfu, the chairman and CEO of electric carmaker BYD, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group, Lei Jun of Xiaomi, Ma Huateng of Tencent, and Liang Wenfeng of the artificial intelligence chatbot DeepSeek were among the participants of the symposium.
China’s leader urged the assembled founders and CEOs to maintain their competitive spirit and have confidence in the country’s future, emphasising that the challenges they faced were “temporary.”
Moreover, he promised to abolish unreasonable fees or fines against private firms and level the competitive playing field—a common complaint of entrepreneurs in a state-dominated system. Accordingly, China’s parliament said it would review laws centred on promoting the private economy.
“It is necessary to resolutely remove all kinds of obstacles to the equal use of production factors and fair participation in market competition,” Xi told entrepreneurs, according to Xinhua.
“This is the strongest signal China could release to boost social confidence. The fact that Xi Jinping himself shows up to meet with the entrepreneurs highlights the political significance of this meeting,” said You Chuanman, senior lecturer at the School of Law, Singapore University of Social Sciences.
It remains unclear, however, to what extent authorities plan to shift their stance toward the private sector.
According to Bloomberg, a strong show of support by Xi would almost certainly add fuel to the stock-market rally and revive animal spirits among entrepreneurs, but much would depend on whether authorities follow through with more concrete policy actions.
