Chinese leader meets corporate leaders amid economic challenges, including slowing down and high youth unemployment.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has met top corporate leaders, including Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, at a business symposium in Beijing, state media reported.
Since coming to power more than a decade ago, Xi has consistently sought to bolster the role of state enterprises in the world’s second-largest economy and warned against the “disorderly” expansion of the private sector.
But reports last week said he was preparing to meet business luminaries as he battles a slowing economy beset by a real estate crisis, persistently low consumption, and high youth unemployment.
State broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday that the meeting took place at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, with a video showing Ma standing and applauding as Xi entered a lavish room.
CCTV did not immediately give details of the content of the meeting.
Ma’s inclusion hints at the billionaire magnate’s potential public rehabilitation after years out of the spotlight following a tangle with regulators.
The former English teacher founded tech behemoth Alibaba in 1999 and built it into one of China’s most recognizable and dominant private companies.
He once cultivated an outspoken public persona but reined in his pronouncements towards the end of the last decade as Xi oversaw a sweeping crackdown on the country’s once-freewheeling technology and internet platforms.
