China’s private-sector rebound continued in 2025, fueled by “new economy”

The private sector's share of the top 100 listed Chinese companies by market value grew to 40.0 percent in the second half of 2025, driven by high-profile technology firms amid China's artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That share was up from 37.6 percent six months earlier and 33.5 percent at its mid-2024 low.¹  These data in our tracker, updated twice a year, confirm that the three-year relative decline of the private sector's share between mid-2021 and mid-2024 did not mark a permanent reversal of its spectacular rise over the previous decade. Even so, the private sector's share today remains far below its 55.4 percent peak reached in mid-2021.

The PIIE tracker adopts a strict definition of the private sector, limiting it to firms with less than 10 percent state ownership. The state sector includes both mixed-ownership enterprises (MOEs), in which the state holds between 10 and 50 percent, and majority state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The tracker reflects the relative shares of aggregate market capitalization among the top 100 mainland Chinese companies ranked by market value, regardless of whether they are listed in China or overseas. As such, it filters out general market trends that affect private and state firms equally. The methodology is detailed in our 2022 PIIE Working Paper.

Private-sector companies in the top 100 list include incumbent tech giants like Tencent (#1), Alibaba (#4), CATL (#9), Xiaomi (#16), and BYD (#18). Several new private-sector, high-tech manufacturers joined the ranking in the second half of 2025, including optical transceiver maker Eoptolink (#34), GPU producer Moore Threads (#54), circuit-board maker Victory Giant Technology (#62), and AI chipmaker MetaX Integrated Circuits (#65).

China's political leaders have publicly celebrated the rise of these private-sector champions of the country's "new economy," one in which growth will be fueled more by high-tech manufacturing, decarbonization, and innovation, and less by housing and infrastructure development. In February 2025, President Xi Jinping met with a group of prominent private entrepreneurs in high-tech sectors, including Lei Jun of Xiaomi, Liang Wenfeng of DeepSeek (which is unlisted and therefore not in our ranking), Jack Ma of Alibaba, Pony Ma of Tencent, Ren Zhengfei of Huawei, Wang Chuanfu of BYD, and Zeng Yuqun of CATL.

Meanwhile, many Chinese private-sector businesses and their owners face existential struggles. On July 27, 2025, Wang Linpeng, once the richest man in Hubei province and the chairman and CEO of Easyhome New Retail Group, China's largest but financially distressed home furniture retailer, was reported to have committed suicide, four days after his release from a three-month detention by Wuhan authorities for reasons that remain undisclosed. Wang was the fourth prominent Chinese private entrepreneur to die by suicide in just four months, following Bi Guangjun, founder of the textile company Jindianzi, on April 16; Liu Wenchao, president of the elevator firm Xizi, on June 2; and Zeng Yuzhou, founder of the home furnishing company Liangjiaju, on July 17. Three of the four cases were in industries that have borne the brunt of China's prolonged housing slump, such as elevators, furniture, and home furnishing.

Note

1. Tiny discrepancies between these numbers and those indicated in earlier iterations of our tracker result from retroactive corrections on the ownership status of two companies in the rankings, Bank of Communications and CMOC (formerly known as China Molybdenum).