In the latest indication that authorities are warming up to the technology sector following a nearly three-year crackdown, China’s state planner on Wednesday commended Tencent and Alibaba in a statement outlining research it had done on platform firms.
Platform firms, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), have emerged as significant players in the major innovation sectors that China is pursuing, including semiconductors and autonomous vehicles.
Tencent and Alibaba
Examples cited included Tencent and Meituan’s investments in semiconductors and cloud computing, respectively, as well as Alibaba’s work to digitize agriculture.
The commission made its remarks after officials hinted last week that Ant Group and Tencent had been fined following a crackdown on the country’s technology sector that started in late 2020.
- China’s state planner praises Tencent and Alibaba for research on technology.
- Commission announces fines for Ant and Tencent in 2020 tech sector crackdown.
- Beijing reduces rhetoric, reassures business sector amid COVID-19, meets NDRC.
Regulators regularly condemned and fined these companies for violations during the campaign, which reduced the market value of China’s leading technology corporations by billions of dollars. These violations ranged from failing to protect client privacy to engaging in monopolistic activities.
Tencent’s and Alibaba’s stock prices increased on Wednesday morning on the Hong Kong market, outpacing the benchmark Hang Seng Index’s gain of 1.15%.
Beijing started to tone down its rhetoric early this year, and in recent months, the government has started to reassure the business sector as they attempt to revive China’s economy in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. Last week, the NDRC met with several private companies, including Baidu.
As China wants to lessen its reliance on Western technology, President Xi Jinping has pushed the nation to concentrate more on achieving advances in “hard” technologies like semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
