Even with Jack Ma

Xi Jinping met with China’s tech company bosses

Alibaba boss Jack Ma has fallen out of favor with the Chinese government.

(Bild: AP)

In a carefully choreographed meeting on Monday, China's President Xi Jinping gathered the heads of numerous technology companies around him. Xi's meeting with business leaders - his first since 2018 and the second ever since taking office - marks a policy shift. In recent years, the authorities had increasingly tightened the thumbscrews for the private sector.

For example, they prevented the IPOs of financial services provider Ant and ride-hailing company Didi. In the meantime, however, the world's second-largest economy is suffering from an economic slump.

Analysts saw this meeting as a sign of support for the private sector in view of the growing tensions with the USA. "It's a tacit admission that the Chinese government needs private companies for its tech rivalry with the United States," said Christopher Beddor, senior expert at research house Gavekal Dragonomics. "The government has no other choice."

In order to slow down the technological and military rise of the People's Republic, the US has increasingly restricted exports of high technology to China in recent years. It has also imposed tariffs on goods from the country and threatened to impose more. Despite this, Chinese companies have repeatedly caused a sensation with innovations, particularly in the promising field of artificial intelligence (AI). DeepSeek is a well-known example of this. The development of the software reportedly cost only a fraction of the usual amount. It also makes do with significantly less computing power. Nevertheless, DeepSeek is considered to be on a par with western competitors such as ChatGPT.

Xi seeks way out of economic slump
According to the state news agency Xinhua, Xi gave a speech at the summit. However, it did not provide any information about its content. Xiaoyan Zhang, a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said that the president was probably sending a similar signal to the one he sent in 2018 when he announced tax cuts and financial aid. Xi is signaling support for companies to drive technological progress and boost domestic consumption. According to official Chinese statistics, the private sector accounts for more than half of tax revenues, more than 60 percent of economic output and 70 percent of new technological developments.

Meanwhile, investors scanned the first pictures of the meeting to see which managers had been invited and what the seating arrangements looked like. The bosses of Apple competitor Huawei and electric car manufacturer BYD were seated closest to Xi. Jack Ma, the founder of Amazon competitor Alibaba, was also invited. His appearance is considered highly symbolic, as the most prominent Chinese tech billionaire has withdrawn from the public eye following the failed IPO of his financial services provider Ant.

While the founder of AI start-up DeepSeek was also seen in the footage, the bosses of TikTok parent company ByteDance and Baidu were absent. The shares of the Google competitor fell by seven percent in Hong Kong as a result.