Beijing has stepped up corporate regulatory enforcement this year, though analysts say it’s unlikely to pursue a repeat of the 2021 crackdown that wiped out more than $1 trillion from Chinese tech stocks.

Since January, officials have opened a formal antitrust probe into the country’s largest online travel agency Trip.com and summoned a dozen tech giants — including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance’s Douyin, Baidu, JD.com and Meituan — over aggressive price competition and promotional claims ahead of a shopping festival in June. They also sent a stern warning earlier this month to Walmart China over repeated food-safety failures at its wholesale retailer Sam’s Club. 

“The concentration of actions and number of companies involved inevitably brings back memories of the regulatory crackdown on internet platform companies” from more than five years ago, said Neo Wang, chief China strategist at Evercore. 

Over a two-year span starting in late 2020, Beijing launched a sweeping crackdown on its most powerful corporations, blocking what would’ve been the world’s biggest stock-market debut by Alibaba’s fintech Ant Group, forcing ride-hailing giant Didi Global to delist from the U.S., and intensifying oversight across sectors from after-school tutoring to highly-leveraged property developers.  

“The state was reasserting political control over data, capital expansion, tutoring ideology, overseas listings, and platform power, along with over-financialization,” said Paul Triolo, partner and technology policy lead for China at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, a global advisory firm.

But the game has changed, Triolo said, now that policymakers are more wary about an economy weighed down by lackluster domestic demand, a sluggish job market, and eager for private tech companies to boost investment in computing infrastructure underpinning the country’s AI ambitions. Beijing is attempting to act but without “triggering another broad investor panic,” he said.

Han Shen Lin, China country director at The Asia Group, put it more bluntly, saying that “Beijing needs private-sector confidence, jobs and technology investment far more than it did in 2021.”

Beijing pivoted to support the private sector after years of regulatory clampdown, with a rare closed-door symposium in February 2025 where Chinese President Xi Jinping told the country’s top entrepreneurs, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma, to “showcase their talents” in a new era for the country’s private economy.

China has now made the so-called anti-involution campaign, which is meant to tackle ruinous deflation-fueling price wars and overcapacity across industries, a policy priority.

In January, Beijing launched an antitrust probe into Trip.com for alleged “abuse of market dominance,” forcing merchants into exclusive agreements before hiking commission fees. The move…

This report is from this week’s CNBC’s The China Connection newsletter, which brings you insights and analysis on what’s driving the world’s second-largest economy. You can subscribe here.

I’ve heard him speak in person several times over the years, including his first and only press conference as premier in 2023, and he’s as motivational as Chinese politicians can be. But his candid portrayal of challenges and tech goals on Thursday was far more measured in tone.

That signals one thing: Whatever the geopolitical situation or state of the economy, China sees technology as the key to its future.

To get there requires a departure from China’s state-dominated economic preferences. Businesses and investors also need encouragement, as it wasn’t too long ago that Beijing was tightening oversight of tech companies.

But changes are happening. One senior official told reporters over the weekend that businesses need to take a greater lead in helping policymakers figure out which tech challenges are worth solving and in evaluating research outcomes.

It’s quite a shift from Beijing’s top-down industrial policy — a model that’s started to gain admirers. The approach has stirred anxiety in Washington, which has tried to pursue its own version with the CHIPS and Science Act.

But excessive state participation hasn’t been good for China’s aircraft ambitions, according to a report published last week by Scott Kennedy of the U.S.-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Instead, he said, where China’s private sector has taken the lead, such as in electric vehicles, rapid advances have bolstered Beijing’s status globally as a tech power.

State-organized infrastructure still matters. Government-built charging stations helped electric cars go mass market.

Now, China is rolling out computing power for its homegrown AI companies as part of its 15th five-year development plan that kicked off in January.

But innovation is already happening in the private sector. Last week, just before Li’s speech, I stopped by the offices of Beijing-based startup Linkerbot. The company has been making mechanical hands for humanoid robots that have gained global attention over the past year.

The company pushed back on the idea that it would benefit from specific policy support. Instead, the startup said overall industrial development has enabled its tech to move quickly from research labs to actual business use.

Linkerbot said its robotic hands are sold not just in China but also to customers in Europe, Japan and South Korea. And in a refrain I’m hearing more often, Linkerbot claims production times at least one-sixth those of foreign rivals, at one-tenth the price.

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa., lashed into Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday about DHS law enforcement officials shooting and killing two people during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

“Mistakes have been made,” Grassley said in his opening remarks. “Let’s make it clear. One death is too many. But officers should never be threatened or harmed while enforcing our laws,”

Noem is making her first appearance before a congressional panel since the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents. Noem’s appearance Tuesday is the first of two this week. She is due to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Funding for DHS lapsed last month, and Democrats have so far refused to back an appropriations bill over frustrations with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics. DHS still has billions of dollars at its disposal to keep some programs running thanks to last year’s massive tax-and-spending bill.

Democrats in Congress have been sharply critical of Noem’s leadership of DHS. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., introduced articles of impeachment for Noem in January after federal officers killed Good and Pretti.

Friends and family members of individuals in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention were present at the hearing. They held signs and shouted in Noem’s direction as she took her seat in a Senate committee room on Tuesday.

Another protestor, who introduced herself as a former employee of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is part of DHS, interrupted Noem’s testimony and was forcibly removed from the room.

“Under your leadership, the Homeland Security Department has been devoid of any moral compass or respect for the rule of law,” Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said at the hearing. “Without hesitation or remorse, DHS agents have wreaked havoc in our cities … and acted with unspeakable cruelty against children, immigrant families, and American citizens.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

The fatal shooting this weekend of a second American citizen by federal immigration agents in Minnesota has forced corporate leaders to do something they’ve rarely done since President Donald Trump returned to office last year: publicly disagree with his policies.

For months, executives have kept quiet as the Trump administration expanded its sprawling immigration crackdown. The Department of Homeland Security in recent weeks has sent thousands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents into Minnesota, leading to violent clashes with protestors.

It wasn’t until the Jan. 24 killing of intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents that more CEOs started to break their year of near silence on the president’s actions. The following day, dozens of executives from Minnesota-based corporations co-signed a letter calling for an “immediate de-escalation” in the state.

Even then, it was clear the business leaders were treading carefully — they didn’t mention the name of the shooting victim, the president by name or his policies. Instead of speaking out individually, they published the message as a group.

The reluctance of business leaders — among the most powerful and wealthiest Americans — to explicitly speak out against the president’s policies illustrates how Trump has used his power during his second term. Trump has sued media companies, law firms, universities and banks, and he has threatened corporations with regulatory scrutiny and the review of lucrative government contracts.

“They don’t want to speak out alone because they are afraid,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale School of Management professor, told CNBC. “They know that they will be shaken down, coerced, intimidated [by the administration]. Retaliatory gestures are quite severe.”

Some CEOs have been slightly more bold: Days before Pretti’s killing, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon became the first prominent U.S. CEO to criticize Trump’s immigration crackdown.

In the days that followed Pretti’s death, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Apple CEO Tim Cook have spoken out, too. Altman made pointed comments in a Slack message to OpenAI employees, saying that “part of loving the country is the American duty to push back against overreach” and that “what’s happening with ICE is going too far.”

In his own internal message to Apple’s workforce on Tuesday, Tim Cook described himself as “heartbroken by the events in Minneapolis” and called for “de-escalation,” adding that he had privately expressed concerns to Trump.

Trump has in recent days appeared to soften his approach to DHS’ presence in Minneapolis, using language of de-escalation that mirrored the executives’ public letter and saying he had “very respectful” calls with Minnesota Gov. Tim…

On a cold November evening in Shanghai in 2020, the world’s largest IPO was abruptly canceled by Chinese regulators.

It was Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of tech giant Alibaba. The company’s founder Jack Ma, one of China’s most famous billionaires, was under scrutiny for comments seemingly criticising the country’s financial regulators.  

What followed was four years of pressure on Ma’s empire.

Since the IPO cancelation, more than $400 billion has been wiped off Alibaba’s value, even with a more recent rally. In the months after the failed public listing, Ma retreated from the public eye and Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce player, looked down and out, with management and structure changes bearing little fruit. The moves were not characteristic of the grit the company had shown in the past and a far cry from its strong position now.

But those who know Ma know never to count him out.

“The hallmark of Jack and his personality is that he never gave up,” Brian Wong, a former Alibaba executive and author of “The Tao of Alibaba,” told CNBC.

Wong features in my new show “Built for Billions,” in which I explore Alibaba’s most testing moments and delve into how it grew to become one of the world’s biggest tech companies and one of the most advanced artificial intelligence players.

I have attended Alibaba’s Singles Day in both Shanghai — where it featured a huge gala with celebrities and music performances — and at its headquarters in Hangzhou. The whole company is mobilized as billions of dollars are transacted across its platforms in a short space of time. Those experiences provided a real insight into the scale of the company.

Alibaba has sometimes been compared to U.S. tech giant Amazon. But it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.

“Alibaba now, is seen as a serious player in technology, not just an e-commerce company,” Duncan Clark, an early advisor to Alibaba and chairman of consultancy firm BDA China, told CNBC’s “Built for Billions.”