China premier meets major tech companies, vows more support
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Chinese Premier Li Qiang urged local governments to provide more support to the Internet firms, calling them “trailblazers of the era”.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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HONG KONG – Chinese Premier Li Qiang met senior executives from the country’s leading technology firms, including Alibaba Group Holding and ByteDance, on Wednesday, in a signal that Beijing is ending its crackdown on the industry amid a weakening economy.
Representatives from food delivery platform Meituan and Xiaohongshu Technology, a popular Chinese Instagram-like social media platform, also spoke at the meeting, while JD.com and budget shopping platform PDD Holdings submitted written speeches, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Mr Li urged local governments to provide more support to the Internet firms, calling them “trailblazers of the era”, while pushing the companies to support the real economy through innovation. He also pledged to create a fair environment and reduce compliance costs to promote the sound development of the platform economy.
Chinese officials have sought to rally private enterprises to boost their investments to fire up the world’s second-biggest economy, which lost steam in June.
In recent days, the government has been taking steps to bolster the economy without the use of major stimulus, such as urging banks to extend loan relief to developers to aid the property market. President Xi Jinping has called for greater opening of the economy to focus on foreign cooperation in areas including trade and investment.
The Communist Party’s evolving stance towards the private sector has become one of the most closely watched developments in global markets in recent years, with some observers even calling China’s sprawling Internet sector “uninvestable”.
The government’s two-year crackdown on leading Internet platforms began after Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma critiqued Beijing’s regulation of the financial sector in 2020, forcing Ant Group to pull the plug on what would have been the largest initial public offering in history.
Beijing has been easing scrutiny of major tech companies to help the country’s post-Covid-19 recovery. The Chinese authorities ended probes into tech giants after levying fines on Ant Group and Tencent last Friday.
Earlier on Wednesday, China’s top economic planning agency praised major online platforms, including Tencent Holdings and Meituan, for investing in innovative projects. BLOOMBERG
