One of China’s most storied entrepreneurs has called for the Chinese government to give greater play to the role of private enterprise in the national economy.
Speaking at the 2017 Green Companies Summit in China, Ali Baba Group founder and chairman Ma Yun called for a reconfiguring of the relationship between the government and private enterprise.
In Ma’s view private enterprise should be given free rein to maximise their role as creative and dynamic economic actors, while the chief responsibility of government should be to create a sound environment in which they can operate.
Ma said that private enterprise would have to contribute to the creation of this sound environment by refraining from any forms of malfeasance or misconduct
“We must create a fair and transparent market environment ourselves,” said Ma at the summit. “We absolutely cannot call for a market environment and market fairness on the one hand, while on the other hand we ruin this environment.”
Ma also said that the believes considers the biggest social responsibility of private enterprise to be the resolution of employment problems.
The Ali Baba dynamo was not the only speaker at the 2017 Green Companies summit to call for increasing the role of private enterprise in the Chinese economy.
Xu Xiaonian, a professor at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, said that China’s supply side reforms need to focus on the scaling down of state-owned enterprises and improved protection of private property rights.
