Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior government officials met a group of prominent Chinese tech entrepreneurs in Beijing last week. That neither the property nor finance sector was represented sent a clear signal of the government’s priority.

This meeting came at a significant time in China’s development. While China was able to achieve an economic growth of 5 per cent and a record-breaking trade surplus of 7.27 trillion yuan (US$992.2 billion) last year – on the back of a slew of fiscal and monetary stimulus towards the end of the year – there were doubts about its ability to sustain growth.

The most reported development was probably the launch of AI models from artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek . Offering capabilities comparable to leading US models from OpenAI and Meta but at a fraction of the cost, DeepSeek is disrupting the AI industry and making AI much more available to the masses . Other leading Chinese AI models, like Alibaba’s Qwen and ByteDance’s Goku, are similarly driving change.

Last week’s Beijing meeting sent clear signs of government support for technology-driven innovation and entrepreneurship, continuing the Made in China 2025 initiative launched in 2015.