On Monday, February 17, President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping delivered a speech at a rare closed-door symposium with the participation of entrepreneurs, urging them to show their talents in a new era for business in the Asian country.
The mentioned information was published by Chinese state media. Xi Jinping said that the new era and the new journey have broad prospects for the development of the private economy and great potential. In the context of this statement, the head of the People’s Republic of China noted that it was time for private enterprises and private entrepreneurs to show their talents. He also underlined that China should unify its thinking, strengthen its confidence, and promote the healthy and high-quality development of the private economy. Xi Jinping said that the financial challenges currently facing the private sector of the Asian country are temporary, local, and in the process of reform.
The head of the People’s Republic of China also noted the need to focus on solving the problems of arrears accounts owed to enterprises. Also in this context, he said that Beijing should strengthen law enforcement supervision and focus on rectifying random charges, fines, inspections, and seizures. Xi Jinping drew special attention to the need to effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of entrepreneurs and private entrepreneurs in accordance with the law. Moreover, he called for a clean relationship between government and business.
The mentioned statements were made during the period when there was a growing concern about the potential impact of Beijing as a political center on Chinese business and its relative autonomy.
It is worth noting that the government of the Asian country has made a significant contribution to the growth of the local economy in the last months of 2024. In this case, it means stimulating arrangements aimed at reviving China’s economic system, which has recently been facing such negatively sensitive challenges as weak domestic consumer demand, falling investor confidence, the protracted crisis in the real estate sector, and geopolitical tensions, especially manifested in the context of relationships between Beijing and Washington, which are on the trajectory of a consistent deterioration, which already has consequences in the form of mutual restrictive measures.
As for the current cooperation between China and the United States, which was already mentioned in the previous paragraph, it is worth noting that these countries are in a position of some kind of technological rivalry concerning each other. Beijing continues to demonstrate certain achievements in the technology sector, even though Washington has limited shipments of advanced chips and equipment for the production of microcircuits of the appropriate category to the Asian country. It is worth noting that the chips are necessary for training and ensuring the subsequent functioning of artificial intelligence systems. Last month, the Chinese brand DeepSeek released its revolutionary machine intelligence configuration, which can fully compete with similar digital products from Western companies at significantly lower training costs. In this case, Beijing has effectively challenged Washington’s dominance in the global artificial intelligence industry. Media reported that DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng attended the event at which Xi Jinping delivered a speech.
On Monday, the head of the People’s Republic of China said that the Asian country should strive to promote scientific and technological innovations, among other goals.
Xi Jinping’s speech at the symposium is likely to increase optimism about the growth prospects of the Chinese economy. Also, in this case, the intention of Beijing as a political center to support entrepreneurs was stated at the highest level, which is probably to be identified as a favorable signal. If China’s authorities take measures to stimulate the development of the homegrown technology area, this will have a significant economic effect.
The media also released information according to which Chinese lawmakers are currently discussing the draft of the country’s first basic law focused on private sector growth. According to data published by the mentioned media, the private sector accounts for more than 60% of China’s gross domestic product (GDP), 48.6% of foreign trade, 56.5% of fixed-assets investments, 59.6% of tax revenue, and more than 80% of urban employment.
In addition to DeepSeek founder, Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma, Ren Zhengfei, founder and chief executive officer of Huawei Technologies, Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Xiaomi Corp, Wang Xing, founder of food delivery giant Meituan, and heads of automaker BYD and battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. also attended the symposium. This information was published by the media.
It’s worth mentioning that at the end of 2020, Beijing launched a sort of regulatory attack on China’s large technology companies. These actions did not become some kind of existential barrier to the continued activities of the mentioned companies but were a sensitive impact factor in the negative sense of the relevant wording. The authorities feared the growing strength and scale of the specified business structures. Since then, no significant changes have been recorded in the approach of the Chinese authorities to interact with large technology companies. The February symposium may become a kind of turning point in the practice of relationships between Beijing as a political center and technology brands. At the same time, there may not be fundamental changes in the relevant context, but a certain shift is still practically guaranteed since Xi Jinping’s statements contain unambiguous signals of an appropriate nature. Moreover, it is obvious that against the background of escalating geopolitical tensions, which have a negative impact on the system of international cooperation, the technology sector is becoming critically important for Beijing, both from an economic and political point of view. In the era of global digitalization and the formation of a new, virtual, dimension of reality, technology is becoming what can be called a vital impulse to move forward in the broad sense of the corresponding verbal construction.
As we have reported earlier, China Hits 5% GDP Target.
