"China sends a strong signal to boost the confidence of private enterprises", "The Chinese government encourages private enterprises to play a greater role in the field of scientific and technological innovation", "stay optimistic about China's new growth momentum"... Foreign media and observers have commented on the high-standard private enterprises symposium held by China on February 17.
This is the second time that Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, President of the People's Republic of China, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, attended a private enterprise symposium and delivered an important speech after more than six years. Some analysts pointed out that the symposium in November 2018 responded to the arguments such as "the private economy completes its mission and withdraws from the historical stage" at that time, emphasizing strong support for the development and growth of private enterprises, which greatly boosted market confidence. This symposium not only emphasized that China's basic policies and policies for the development of the private economy cannot be changed, nor will it change, but also pointed out the direction for promoting the healthy development and high-quality development of the private economy. "Confidence" has become the key word for the outside world to observe China's development.
Just recently, from the emergence of DeepSeek in the field of artificial intelligence, to the popularity of the animated movie "Nezha 2" around the world, to the humanoid robots appearing on the Spring Festival Gala "Yangko Dance", behind these phenomenal products, Chinese private enterprises are full of vitality. As the top Chinese leader emphasized, "China's private economy has now formed a considerable scale and occupies a heavy weight."
From a global perspective, many countries face challenges such as insufficient momentum for economic growth and weak trade growth. In particular, the new US government has introduced a series of unilateral trade protection measures, which has brought great uncertainty to the global economy. Against this background, China's economic operation is facing some new situations, and the development of the private economy is also facing some difficulties and challenges.
How to crack it? This symposium proposed a series of policy measures, each of which directly points to the practical issues that private enterprises strongly reflect. From resolutely breaking down various obstacles to equal use of production factors in accordance with the law and fair participation in market competition, to continuously promoting fair opening of infrastructure competitive fields to all types of business entities, to continuing to make great efforts to solve the problems of difficulty and high cost of financing for private enterprises, the "steady implementation" of these measures will continue to safeguard the private economy.
As the world's second largest economy, China's economy's contribution to the world economy has remained at around 30% for many years. The private economy plays an important role in this. People often use "five, six, seven, eight, nine" to describe the importance of China's private economy - "contributes more than 50% of tax revenue, more than 60% of GDP, more than 70% of technological innovation achievements, more than 80% of urban labor and employment, and more than 90% of the number of enterprises." With such a heavy weight, the importance of China's healthy and high-quality development of the private economy to world economic growth is self-evident.
At the same time, the outside world noticed that this private enterprise symposium has a high technological content, and many participating enterprises have the most innovative capabilities in the world. Some research institutions pointed out that compared with the 2018 symposium, the participating companies are more concentrated in new energy, automobiles, semiconductors, robots, consumer electronics, the Internet, artificial intelligence and other fields, and the proportion of the technology industry has further increased, and the position of the technology industry in the ecological chain has also been further improved.
In China, private enterprises also play an important role in scientific and technological innovation. The All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce released the "Report on Innovation of the Top 1,000 Private Enterprises in R&D Investment in 2024" in September last year, showing that their total R&D expenses in 2023 increased by 12.78% year-on-year, 6.54 percentage points higher than the increase of the top 1,000 companies in R&D investment in the world. The Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee clearly stated that capable private enterprises should be supported to take the lead in undertaking major national technical research tasks and further open up major national scientific research infrastructure to private enterprises.
It can be foreseeable that Chinese private enterprises are expected to further become an important force in reshaping the global industrial innovation pattern. Some analysts pointed out that the success of DeepSeek may become a catalyst for China to further promote technological innovation in private enterprises. Recently, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Bank of America and others have spoken out intensively, expressing their optimism about the development prospects of China's technology industry and are confident in the performance of the Chinese market.
Let's talk about foreign trade again. In 2024, the proportion of private enterprises' import and export volume in China's total import and export volume increased from 43.3% in 2019 to 55.5%, maintaining China's largest foreign trade business entity for six consecutive years. As the main force of China's foreign trade, the development of private enterprises will further contribute to the stability of the global supply chain.
Taking CATL, a company participating in this symposium, as an example, one in every three new energy vehicles in the world uses CATL batteries. The global power battery usage data recently released by international research institution SNE Research shows that CATL's market share further increased to 37.9% in 2024, ranking first in the world for eight consecutive years. In the future, Chinese private enterprises will continue to inject stability into the global industrial chain and bring new development opportunities.
At the end of last year, China's first basic law specifically on the development of the private economy, the draft of the Private Economy Promotion Law, was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for review. Latin American News Agency commented that China has been creating a good environment for private enterprises and fully affirmed the great achievements made in the development of the private economy and its important contributions to the country's economic and social development. I believe that with the continuous improvement of the business environment, "there is a broad prospect for the development of the private economy, and it is timely that private enterprises and private entrepreneurs show their skills." Such "Chinese confidence" brings spring information to the world.
(International Sharp Commentary)
