China’s social-minded technopreneurs are a force to reckon with

Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior government officials met a group of prominent Chinese tech entrepreneurs in Beijing last week. That neither the property nor finance sector was represented sent a clear signal of the government’s priority.

Attendees included Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding (which owns the South China Morning Post), Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun, Tencent founder and CEO Pony Ma Huateng, BYD chairman and CEO Wang Chuanfu and Huawei Technologies founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei. Other business leaders included CATL chairman Robin Zeng Yuqun and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, as well as Wang Xingxing, founder of robotics company Unitree, and Liu Yonghao, chairman of animal feed producer New Hope.

This meeting came at a significant time in China’s development. While China was able to achieve an economic growth of 5 per cent and a record-breaking trade surplus of 7.27 trillion yuan (US$992.2 billion) last year – on the back of a slew of fiscal and monetary stimulus towards the end of the year – there were doubts about its ability to sustain growth.