Professor Hong Bo, AXA Chair in Global Finance at SOAS University of London, discussed the significance of Xi's meeting with private sector representatives. She believes this meeting signals improving business relations, reducing policy uncertainties, and boosting private business growth.
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00:00Professor Hongbo is the AXA Chair in Global Finance at Soho University of London.
00:05Good to have you on the programme. What do you think this meeting signals to the business community?
00:14Yes, I think it is a very significant signal. I think business people,
00:21they care a lot about policy uncertainties. So it shows that, you know, the relationship
00:30between the Chinese government and the private sector is now improving so that the uncertainty
00:38of doing business will be reduced. So I think that is very important to attract more private
00:46businesses. How far do you think this will go to improving investor and consumer sentiment too,
00:53and ultimately stoke that economic growth? Yes, I think as you just you already mentioned
01:00that the private sector has been playing a very important role. But in the past a few years,
01:08we saw the declining of the private sector activities. So that hurts the confidence of
01:18the domestic public. So I think this meeting actually sent out a message that can boost
01:27the public confidence in the private sector, because the government has shown that the
01:34government is going to support the private sector in the near future. So I think that will lead to
01:42much more market driven activities, economic activities, and that can also promote domestic
01:52consumption. Let's talk about who was in the room. Some big names were there. But should we take
01:59anything from the fact that some heads of China's household name businesses were not there?
02:08Yes, I would not really worry about the individual people who are there. But as far as I can see,
02:17this is a gathering of the, you know, the head of very big tech firms in China, and many of them
02:27are international players. So I think we should see the general direction in which
02:35that the private sector is going with the support of with more support from the Chinese government.
02:43There is renewed interest, isn't there in China's tech sector with all the breakthrough
02:47of AI pioneer DeepSeek. What other business success stories are getting the markets excited,
02:54would you say? Yeah, that's a very good example. I think the meeting took place, you know,
03:02this week, and after a couple of weeks after DeepSeek release of the new product, and this is
03:09very encouraging, a good moment. It shows that the Chinese government is actually very confident
03:17in the capacity of the Chinese tech sector in terms of the international competition.
03:26In terms of other businesses, if you can think about what China is leading at the moment,
03:33think about the green technologies, and think about everything that is related to digital
03:40transformation, and also AI application. So, you know, in many countries in the global south,
03:48actually they do not need the most advanced technologies, but they need the application
03:54side. And China is very good in this respect. Professor Hongbo, thank you very much indeed.