Xi’s meeting with Jack Ma, tech bosses is tonic for US$245 billion Hong Kong bull run

Name: Chinese President Xi Jinping holds rare meeting with China’s top entrepreneurs amid US tech rivalry
Uploaded: 2025-02-18T07:45:31.000Z
Duration: 1 min 18 s
Description: Chinese President Xi Jinping holds rare meeting with China’s top entrepreneurs amid US tech rivalry

The rally in Hong Kong this year has returned US$245 billion to Hong Kong’s market capitalisation as tech leaders soared

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People walk past screens displaying the Hang Seng stock index and stock prices outside the Exchange Square in Central. Photo: Reuters

Zhang Shidongin Shanghai

Published: 3:45pm, 18 Feb 2025Updated: 4:29pm, 18 Feb 2025

President Xi Jinping’s meeting with China’s most influential tycoons has injected optimism into the world-beating stock market rally in Hong Kong, with analysts from Morgan Stanley and UBS calling it the end of regulatory crackdown on the tech sector.

The appearance of Jack Ma, a co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding, delivered a clear-cut signal of the shift in Beijing’s policy toward the industry and the broader private sector, indicating a wrapping up of the campaign, Morgan Stanley said. UBS’s wealth management unit said it expected large Chinese tech stocks to continue outperforming.

China’s most valuable tech companies had charged into a bull market preceding the Beijing meeting, delivering a US$245 billion boost to Hong Kong’s stock market capitalisation this year. Investors drove Alibaba, Xiaomi, Tencent Holdings and others to multi-year highs, following start-up DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence (AI) breakthrough.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping holds rare meeting with China’s top entrepreneurs amid US tech rivalry

“For investors, the takeaway is clear: China’s leadership is throwing its weight behind tech once again,” said Stephen Innes, managing director at SPI Asset Management in Bangkok. “If this signals a thaw in China’s regulatory freeze on private enterprise, expect a flood of optimism in Chinese equities.”

The Hang Seng Index rose 1.6 per cent to its highest point in four months on Tuesday, after the state-run Xinhua published a readout from the meeting, possibly the most significant since 2018. Xi also held meetings with the private sector in November 2018, July 2020 and May 2024, according to Goldman Sachs.

The city’s stock benchmark is the best performer among the world’s major indices this year with a 15 per cent gain. Alibaba, which owns the Post, climbed 3.4 per cent to a three-year high of HK$126.30 on Tuesday, and Tencent gained 2 per cent to HK$503.50, the highest since July 2021. Xiaomi surged 7.2 per cent to an all-time high of HK$48.40.

A CCTV screengrab showing Jack Ma (second from left) during the symposium with President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Monday. Photo: SCMP

Besides Ma, Tencent founder Pony Ma Huateng, BYD boss Wang Chuanfu, Huawei Technologies founder Ren Zhengfei, CATL founder Zeng Yuqun and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng were also among businessmen seen at the meeting with Xi.