What did China’s tech entrepreneurs tell Xi Jinping at the symposium?

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What did China’s tech entrepreneurs tell Xi Jinping at the symposium?

China’s leading technology entrepreneurs, including

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founder Ren Zhengfei and

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founder Lei Jun, voiced their confidence in the country’s development prospects at

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this week.

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, the face of China’s resilience against US hostilities in technology, told Xi that concerns had eased over China’s lack of home-grown chips and operating systems – the “heart and soul” of modern technology – according to a report from the People’s Daily on Friday.

“I firmly believe that a stronger China is rising at an accelerated pace,” the 80-year-old founder of the US-sanctioned telecoms equipment giant was quoted as saying.

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, the CEO of smartphone and electric vehicle (EV) maker Xiaomi, said “there is nothing that cannot be overcome” in China’s progress, despite the “changes in international winds and clouds” – likely a reference to the intensifying

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******** President Xi Jinping, centre, attends a symposium on private enterprises in Beijing on Monday. Photo: Xinhua alt=******** President Xi Jinping, centre, attends a symposium on private enterprises in Beijing on Monday. Photo: Xinhua>

He added that Xiaomi’s revenues had been growing at “more than 30 per cent” after two years of decline. The Beijing-based company is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter financial results on March 18.

While the People’s Daily article did not mention the US directly, Xi’s symposium with the country’s top entrepreneurs on Monday came as China shows perseverance under US export restrictions aimed at curbing the country’s technological advances. Breakthroughs, such as the artificial intelligence (AI) models from

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, have been hailed as China’s secret weapon to surviving the tech war.

DeepSeek founder and CEO

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attended the symposium but did not make any speeches.

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, founder and CEO of Unitree Robotics and the youngest entrepreneur at the meeting at just 35, told Xi that the humanoid robot developer and its team were “born and raised in China”. In response, Xi said the country’s innovation required contributions from a younger generation.

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, founder of Will Semiconductor and the only delegate from the legacy chip industry at the symposium, told Xi that the “localisation ratio” – the proportion of domestically developed technology and equipment – continued to increase in the semiconductor supply chain, with momentum seen in both “upstream and downstream” sectors.

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, founder of the world’s top EV maker

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, shared his experience of building the industry “from ground zero”. Liu Yonghao, founder of China’s largest animal feed producer New Hope Group, explained to Xi how traditional agriculture businesses could thrive by adopting new technologies.

Xi’s gathering with dozens of entrepreneurs, including

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founder

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, sought to boost confidence in China’s private sector. It underscored the role of “national champions” in the technology sector in propelling the world’s second-largest economy forward. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Also at the meeting was Pony Ma Huateng – founder, chairman and CEO of

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– who said he was confident that China’s business environment would get “better and better”, according to local newspaper Shenzhen Special Zone Daily.

Tencent planned to increase investment in technological innovation to accelerate the development and adoption of large language models, he was quoted as saying.

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