Business leaders bow to Xi as Communist Party pushes in

Beijing, China | AFP | Chinese billionaires are boasting about their Marxist bonafides. The Communist Party is tightening its grip on state-owned companies. And foreign companies are being asked to invite party cells into their offices.

Under President Xi Jinping, the country’s ruling party is muscling back into business, expanding its reach in private enterprise and even laying out a plan for the government to take stakes in high-profile tech and media companies.

With a stronger mandate after receiving a second term as head of the party Wednesday, Xi plans to deepen its control in “all areas of endeavour in every part of the country”, as he told leaders in a three-and-a-half hour speech last week.

In September, the Chinese Communist Party released a new document on entrepreneurship calling in part to strengthen teaching of “socialist core values” to the new generation of entrepreneurs.

It is a significant change for the CCP, which has long had a fraught relationship with the business world.

Since kicking off economic reforms in the late 1970s, Beijing has allowed private enterprises a free rein in many sectors, while slowly loosening its grip on the state-owned sector, which comprises “strategic” industries such as steel and telecommunications.

“Key technology used to be controlled by state-owned companies and the party focused on those companies,” said Mark Natkin, managing director at technology consultancy Marbridge Consulting.

But “as private enterprise has grown stronger and become heavily woven into society, there is greater desire by the party to be involved”.

– ‘Never been so proud’ –

China’s capitalists are getting on board as the state has taken a bigger role in picking winners and a harder line against those perceived to be defying the party’s aims.

This year, a few business icons have disappeared, and others like Wang Jianlin, chairman of entertainment conglomerate Dalian Wanda, have faced immense pressure from regulators over the build up of debt at their companies.

Listening to Xi’s speech, “I was overwhelmed by emotions,” Wang told the state-run Beijing News.

“As a Chinese, I’ve never been so proud.”

The sentiment was echoed by other titans of industry like Jack Ma of Alibaba, Zhang Jindong of Suning, and Liu Chuanzhi of Lenovo, who told Beijing News the party will unite the people to “realise grand dreams”.

To celebrate Xi’s address Tencent, China’s largest tech company, created an online game for the masses to applaud the nation’s president which has racked up 1.4 billion claps.

The app’s release followed a report in the Wall Street Journal that the Chinese state is looking to take a one percent stake and gain a board seat at the company, along with other major internet companies.