President Xi Jinping has reiterated his view of China’s inevitable rise – a belief that continues to drive policymaking at the highest level – at a closely watched symposium with prominent entrepreneurs, held to boost private-sector morale and shore up economic momentum.
He told the assembled business leaders on Monday that the East still holds a great deal of promise and the Chinese economy remains incomparable on the world stage, according to a Friday story from Communist Party news organ People’s Daily that revealed more details of the closed-door meeting.
“In the long term, the east wind is still prevailing … confidence is very important,” he said, echoing a slogan from Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China.
In the 1950s, the revolutionary leader adopted a phrase from classical literature, “the east wind prevails over the west wind”, to proclaim the eventual victory of socialism over capitalism.
Stressing the Chinese economy’s size and resilience, Xi said “there is no other place that compares” anywhere on the globe.
His remarks came as confidence in the world’s second-largest economy has been on the wane, particularly among private enterprise. In 2025, lacklustre consumption, a prolonged real estate slump and tariff hikes from the United States all threaten to weigh down growth.
Last year, the proportion of China’s gross domestic product relative to the US fell below two thirds, down from a high of around three quarters in 2021. This decline has been primarily attributed to the depreciation of the yuan and high US inflation that boosted the Western superpower’s nominal GDP.
At Monday’s symposium – the first gathering of comparable prestige Xi has hosted for business figures since 2018 – the president said the purpose of the meeting was to “unify our thinking and strengthen our confidence”.
The show of support from the country’s leader came as welcome relief for China’s private sector, as intensifying geopolitical tensions and tough crackdowns on some of the nation’s corporate giants have led to cloudier outlooks among entrepreneurs and investors.
Some of the difficulties the private sector has been dealing with are the result of the processes of reform, development and industrial transformation, Xi said to an audience that included Xiaomi founder Lei Jun and Ren Zhengfei, head of Huawei Technologies.
“They are local, temporary and can be overcome,” he said.
Xi’s use of the “East wind” slogan was not the first time he has invoked the notion of a simultaneous rise in China and decline in the West. The country’s economic and technological achievements, fuel for a growing sense of national pride, have led to a more triumphalist turn in official rhetoric.
“The world today is undergoing major changes unseen in a century, but time and trends are on our side,” state news agency Xinhua quoted him as saying in a commentary piece from 2021.