An event took place on February 17th, 2025 in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People which one economic expert described as a “course correction”, signaling that successful Chinese entrepreneurs might now be “honoured rather than punished”. The meeting was convened by Chinese President Xi Jinping with top business leaders invited. The gathering included Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, Huawei’s Ren Zhengfei, BYD’s Wang Chuanfu, Xiaomi’s Lei Jun, and Tencent’s Pony Ma. Addressing these men and others who are amongst China's most successful businessmen, President Xi stated that “it is the right time for the majority of private business and entrepreneurs to show their talent.” These private enterprises should take advantage of the continuity in China’s economic development strategy. “Private business has broad prospects and great promise” to create wealth and opportunity. China’s governance and the scale of its market give it an inherent advantage in developing new industries, Xi said.
Analysts were studying who was there and who was not. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, disappeared from public view for months after a 2020 speech in which he was critical of the Chinese government in respect of its financial oversight. Regulators halted Ma’s Ant Group’s IPO. Ma gave up control of Ant in 2023. Ma’s Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce firm with businesses in cloud computing and AI, was one of Beijing's biggest targets in its private sector crackdown, being fined a record $2.75 billion for anti-monopoly violations in 2021. But at this meeting, Ma was seen applauding President Xi at what was his first public appearance with Xi since 2020.
Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek, a startup that is threatening to upset the tech world order with its artificial intelligence models, was also present. However executives from two of the Chinese tech industry’s biggest players – ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, and Baidu, which specialises in search and AI – did not attend and were presumably not invited. Baidu shares fell by more than 8%. However there were gains elsewhere in Asian markets as the meeting raised hopes of renewed support in China’s private tech sector, which has been targeted by rounds of government crackdowns in the last few years.
In recent years Xi has spearheaded campaigns to increase government control over private industry, particularly in technology, which was considered to be unruly and disruptive as it underwent huge expansion, seemingly unconcerned by the tight state controls around other industries. But this meeting occurred against a backdrop in China of economic slowdown, a real estate crisis, high youth unemployment, and U.S. tariffs under Trump’s trade policies, forcing a shift toward supporting private enterprise after years of regulatory crackdowns on tech giants like Alibaba, Tencent, and Didi. China’s private sector must now play a role in countering geopolitical tensions and domestic economic headwinds. Beijing needs now to prioritise private-sector revival to stabilize growth.
“It’s a tacit acknowledgment that the Chinese government needs private-sector firms for its tech rivalry with the US,” said Christopher Beddor of Gavekal Dragonomics in Hong Kong. “The government has no choice but to support them if it wants to compete with the US.”
Pray for these highly influential business leaders in China that they might find ‘real wealth’ in the Lord Jesus.
Pray for the Chinese leadership to make wise decisions in these difficult days.
Pray for the unemployed in China that decisions made at this level might improve their lives.
Source: The UK Guardian Newspaper and others.
