Xi Jinping sends rare letter urging Hong Kong entrepreneurs to play major role in China’s reform
- Chinese president thanked city’s business leaders with Ningbo ancestry for their support after they wrote to him about their contributions
President Xi Jinping has taken a rare step to engage the business community as he urged Hong Kong entrepreneurs with familial ties in a mainland port city to make greater contributions to the nation’s modernisation, a move experts see as a way to show confidence in the faltering private sector.
Xi’s remarks on Tuesday were in a letter written in response to Hong Kong business leaders who are descendants of pioneering Ningbo-born entrepreneurs of the city.
They include Anna Pao Pui-hing, eldest daughter of the late shipping magnate Sir Pao Yue-kong, and Ronald Chao Kee-young, eldest son of the late industrialist Chao Kuang-piu.
Xi expressed gratitude to the businesspeople for their continued support of their hometown and country, including establishing businesses and schools, while asking them to leverage their respective strengths and actively take part in the country’s reform and opening up.
The president’s reply coincides with the 40th anniversary of late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s 1984 call to mobilise the global “Ningbo bang” – usually formed by merchants – to develop Ningbo. In Chinese, bang means a cluster of people who are bonded together by the same goals and ideals.
Ningbo, a city in Zhejiang province, where Xi served as party secretary from 2002 to 2007, is known as an important port and an industrial hub in China.
The Ningbo merchants have earned their name as “Ningbo bang” after helping establish China’s first modern bank, stock exchange, insurance company, post office, fashion school and various speciality factories spanning cosmetics and food additives to matches and soap.
