Top mainland entrepreneurs and economists met this week in Wenzhou, the heartland of domestic private enterprise, and vowed to work together to progress to the next stage of private-sector growth.
Government officials and executives from more than a dozen companies vowed to transform the 'Wenzhou model' of private enterprise development.
Wenzhou, the home of more than 50,000 private enterprises, became a model of success in the mainland in the 1980s and 1990s. While the vast majority of the rest of China still remained communist, local merchants in this Zhejiang city began setting up production lines at home and started hawking their wares nationwide and later worldwide.
The conference has received wide coverage in the mainland media, which is beginning to write a lot more about private enterprises and their growing importance to society.
'Private enterprises have gone from being fringe elements of society to becoming the core of Chinese society,' the China News Service said. 'Therefore it is more important than ever that China's private sector build large, sustainable and globally competitive corporations.'
Since former president Jiang Zemin called for entrepreneurs to join the party during a speech on July 1, 2001, mainland media and economists have paid more attention to the private sector, which now contributes roughly one third of the nation's gross domestic product.
