China tries to reassure support entrepreneurs: NPR

Beijing-which once China’s government is making loud efforts to correct the wrong or rehabilitate the famous person who has fallen out of affection. They are gestures to restore public trust in power.

And restoration of trust is vital to China’s economy because it is fighting for slowing growth against the backdrop of the Great Trade War with the United States

At meetings with Foreign investors and Internal entrepreneurs This spring, the government took the pain to assure them of official support and protection, telling them that they have green light to start business, create jobs and benefits to society. But this is a message that entrepreneurs have heard at other times for decades, and it indicates the fundamental stress between the state and private entrepreneurs.

Jack Ma

One of the most demonstrative examples was the appearance Jack MaFormer CEO of Chinese E -Commerce Giant Alibaba.

In 2020, Chinese regulatory authorities launched Antimonopoly The Alibaba investigation and suspended a large -scale list of the Ant Group stock market, the financial hand of the company. It happened after MA made a critical attitude towards China’s financial regulators.

Ma touched to Japan where he kept a low profile. But in February he widespread At a high-profile meeting in Beijing, where China’s leader Xi Jinping spent the best executives of the nation company.

“Those who get rich are to promote general prosperity,” XI said.

XI was vague about what specifically policy It will use to achieve joint prosperity – a common level of wealth or equality of relative income. But the general message and context were clear.

Has repression ended on tape records?

“The overall experience is that the private sector works under huge regulatory pressure and restrictions in the last three or four years,” he says Huang YashengEconomist at MIT management school.

These included antitrust investigation into a food delivery platform and punishment On a traveling company over data security.

Analysts say the goals repression Technological firms and entrepreneurs appear to be the breakdown of monopolies, limiting income inequality, strengthening national security and reminding the executives who are the boss.

The state media did not mention the name Ma, and they do not quote any of its remarks in February. And yet, just an image Ma by shaking the arms of si jinping At the Beijing meeting it was enough to signal that Ma was rehabilitated.

It is Juan that “not a direct message that repression was reverse, but at least a message is that you are okay from now on.”

Similarly, China has abolished the wrong beliefs of ordinary people to try to restore public faith in the Chinese justice system. In one prominent case in 2016, China Supreme Court liberated A man more than two decades after he was executed for the murder he did not do.

But the authorities are rarely forced to accept responsibility or be responsible for these miscarriages of justice that many people are “incredibly unsatisfactory” as a result, says Juang.

One entrepreneur wants to return his assets

In addition to Jack Ma, at least one Chinese entrepreneur who has passed to the law, he hopes that he will also be rehabilitated.

Guh Dniezhun was born in the countryside of Eastern China 66 years ago and rose according to data Forbes A magazine, one of China’s richest entrepreneurs on the verge of a century. He built the business empire of dozens of companies, whose crowning was a manufacturer of devices called Kelon Electric Holdings Company.

“Local officials thought that I was very good at this company, and they wanted to pick it up from me,” says GU NPR. “They did not agree and did not say, ‘I want to buy your company’. Instead, they tried to arrest me and made me sell.

GU was Arrested In 2005, he was convicted of theft and fraud – accusations that he said. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but only served seven.

In 2018, Xi Jinping met with business executives in auction to reassure entrepreneurs support and protection of the government.

Next year the Chinese Supreme Court peeled GU of three of the four accusations. But the court released one accusation of the case of assignment, says GU, so that law enforcement agencies are not responsible for the wrong persecution of it.

The court is awarded About $ 67,000 compensation over his time in prison, but GU says he refused money because it was a tiny amount compared to his assets – which he wants to return.

“For my company shares and 1300 acres, I want $ 6.8 billion,” Gu says. “It is normal if they give me only a few hundred million dollars but not giving me a penny, it would go too far.”

He sue local authorities to return his assets, but his case for two decades, and remains uncertain that he will succeed.

GU notes that China Parliament considered The new law of last month that will protect private business from officials trying to take their money. But the law Failed to take this session of Parliament.

The Chinese Economic Administration, the National Development and Reform Commission, did not answer NPR questions about the GU case and efforts to reassure entrepreneurs.

Official reassurance in the past came in light economic times

Huang Yasheng notes that China has previously taken high -profile measures to reassure private entrepreneurs and raise the economy, such as making changes to the Constitution to legalize private business in 1988 and protect private property rights in 2004.

As of the end of 2024, China had over 55 million private enterprises. The private sector has introduced more than half of the country’s tax revenues, 60% of national gross domestic product and 80% of urban jobs, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology reports.

Juang says that the promotion of the private sector was easier in the past when “China had this entrepreneurship that is waiting for it to be unleashed in the economy.” He adds: “The situation is quite different today.”

Today, he notes, the low hanging fruit of productivity and rapid economic growth. China produced more than the world can consume and the country sits down excessive power And heavy debt.

Now, he says whether Chinese entrepreneurs decide to start business or invest not only in public policy. It is also about the general economic situation and whether people who can make money think.

And this situation is now much less favorable, according to him, than the last government tried to reassure entrepreneurs in 2018.