Not just Alibaba’s Jack Ma: Who’s who at the summit seen as a ‘symbolic’ end to China’s crackdown on tech
Alibaba founder Jack Ma attends the 5th World Zhejiang Entrepreneurs Convention at Hangzhou International Expo Center on Nov. 13, 2019. ·Fortune·VCG—VCG/Getty Images
As soon as details started to trickle out from Monday’s meeting between China‘s President Xi Jinping and leading business executives, Chinese commentators pored over photos and video to figure out who got an invite, even making seating charts to figure out which companies were most favored.
For many, it looked like a long-awaited rekindling of ties between Xi and China’s private sector, a relationship that soured five years ago. Now, under threat from President Donald Trump and a more aggressive U.S., the two sides appear to have rediscovered their need for each other.
Before Monday, most attention was on the possible attendance of Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who has largely kept a low profile since 2020, when Beijing officials derailed the IPO of Alibaba affiliate Ant Group.
Yet other famed Chinese business leaders also took the spotlight during Monday’s meeting. Six executives—Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu, New Hope chairman Liu Yonghao, Shanghai Will Semiconductor chairman Yu Renrong, Unitree founder Wang Xingxing, and Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun—delivered remarks during Xi’s symposium, according to Xinhua, China’s state news agency.
Video footage and other media reports revealed that other tech luminaries, such as Tencent CEO Pony Ma, CATL founder Robin Zeng, Meituan CEO Wang Xing, and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, were in attendance.
Analysts dubbed the symposium between Xi Jinping and an array of private-sector entrepreneurs a “symbolic” end to China’s crackdown on the tech sector, even if in practice officials ended their regulatory blitz years ago.
Here are some of the business luminaries that attended Monday’s meeting—and why Beijing might see them as the future of China’s economy.
National champions
Huawei and its founder, Ren Zhengfei, have become a symbol of China’s push for tech self-sufficiency. For years, the company has been subject to U.S. sanctions that prevented it from getting access to cutting-edge chips.
Yet in 2023, Huawei released the Mate 60 Pro, a premium smartphone featuring a domestically manufactured processor just a few generations behind the cutting edge. The company has since followed that up with more premium electronics, now running on Huawei’s own homegrown operating system.
The company is also making AI chips, increasingly vital as the U.S. tries to cut off China’s access to processors made by companies like Nvidia.
BYD and its chair, Wang Chuanfu, have also quickly become one of China’s national champions. The carmaker, founded in 1995, has taken over China’s car market with affordable plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles. BYD sold over 4 million cars in 2024, roughly the same as more established carmakers like Ford and Honda.
BYD is also quickly expanding its global footprint, with manufacturing hubs planned throughout Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Europe.
Xiaomi, best known for its phones, is also making a hard push into EVs. CEO Lei Jun claimed last month that sales of the company’s SU7 (endorsed by Ford CEO Jim Farley) overtook Tesla’s Model 3 in China in December.
CATL’s founder, Robin Zeng, also attended Monday’s meeting; the company is now one of the leading suppliers of electric car batteries, working with companies like Tesla and Toyota. Legacy Western carmakers like Stellantis are also now collaborating with CATL to bring its battery technology to plants based outside of China.
Not all of Monday’s attendees were from what’s traditionally considered “tech,” however. Liu Yonghao, one of Monday’s private sector speakers according to Xinhua’s report, is the founder of New Hope Group, one of China’s largest agriculture companies. Beijing is pushing for greater self-reliance in agriculture technology in areas like breeding, land quality, and agricultural machinery.
Up-and-comers
Monday’s guest list also featured the founders of two of China’s buzziest startups: robotics manufacturer Unitree and AI developer DeepSeek. Commentators point to the two startups, as well as Game Science, the developer behind hit video game Black Myth: Wukong, as some of China’s rising tech stars.
DeepSeek sparked a massive selloff in U.S. tech shares earlier this year when the startup’s AI models—whose performance matched products from U.S.-based developers, yet supposedly trained on a much smaller budget—seemed to challenge arguments that AI’s future lay in expensive proprietary AI.
Since then, the Hangzhou-based startup has quickly rocketed to the forefront of China’s AI sector. Companies like BYD are quickly integrating DeepSeek’s AI model into their products and services. China’s Big Tech companies are also getting on board, with Baidu and Tencent now offering DeepSeek’s model alongside their own AI.
Unlike DeepSeek, Unitree, founded in 2016, has yet to capture the attention of Western investors. But it’s quickly become a leader in the robotics space, thanks to its humanoid and quadruped robots. Unitree’s humanoid robots performed a dance routine at this year’s Spring Festival Gala, an annual TV variety show hosted by China’s state broadcaster during the Lunar New Year.
Why did Monday’s meeting matter?
Monday’s private sector symposium came amid broader struggles in China’s economy. Domestic consumption has recovered more slowly than expected coming out of the COVID pandemic, weighed down in part by continued troubles in the property market.
Strong exports have helped bolster China’s economic growth, but those exports are now jeopardized by U.S. President Donald Trump, who is threatening new tariffs in a drive to rebalance the U.S. trade deficit. Since taking office, Trump has imposed a 10% tariff on all goods from China, and a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminum imports; he’s also threatened a country-by-country system of reciprocal tariffs.
“Beijing is turning more pro-business as the trade war 2.0 looms,” Larry Hu, Macquarie chief China economist, wrote in a Monday note. Hu suggests that China’s two-speed economy—where “external demand," rather than domestic consumption, drove growth—is threatened by “rising uncertainty” around U.S. trade policy.
Xi, according to Xinhua, said that China’s challenges were “partial rather than general, temporary rather than long-term, and surmountable rather than unsolvable.”
Investors, at least, are hopeful that China’s tech sector has turned a corner. The Hang Seng Tech Index, which tracks Chinese technology companies, is up 28% since the beginning of the year.
Individual tech companies have performed even better. Xiaomi and BYD are both up more than 40% for the year; Alibaba is up over 55%, and chipmaker SMIC—which is reportedly working with Huawei on its AI and phone chips—is up over 60%.
