China Briefing | China must take urgent action to push its private sector past a crisis of confidence
A firestorm of criticism following a social media post advocating that the private sector should be phased out has exposed how it is still treated as a second-class player
For people seeking internet fame or infamy, making shocking claims is one of the surest routes to generate eyeball traffic.
In that sense, Wu Xiaoping, who was until recently an obscure investment banker turned internet entrepreneur, achieved instant notoriety last week when he posted a short essay on Chinese social media arguing that China’s private sector had played its historical role in assisting the leap forward of the public sector and should be phased out.
In its stead, a brand-new, more focused, and more united state-private mixed ownership sector with greater economies of scale would gain more prominence in the socialist market economy, Wu said in the post.
Wu’s post was mostly met with criticism and scorn from online users who dismissed it as odd or ludicrous.
More interestingly, several influential Chinese newspapers – including party mouthpiece the People’s Daily, The Beijing News and the Economic Daily – treated Wu’s post as more than an attention-seeking stunt and ran sharply worded commentaries to rebuke him.