Xi Jinping’s U-turn on tech

The latest sign was President Xi Jinping’s meeting on Monday with Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma and other prominent business leaders such as Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei, DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, and BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu. Xi told attendees that it’s time to promote a healthy and high-quality private sector. The speech was an important new signal, as Xi previously cracked down on his country’s tech sector, most notably by canceling the 2020 IPO of Alibaba affiliate Ant Group

That made Jack Ma’s presence at Xi’s gathering all the more significant. Once the richest man in China, the cofounder of e-commerce giant Alibaba fell out of favor with Beijing amid a backlash against tycoons. He criticized Chinese regulators weeks before they canceled Ant Group’s IPO and then mysteriously disappeared from the public eye before slowly coming back on the scene last year. Alibaba shares are up 47% since the start of the year.

The overall picture, of course, is complicated. China’s economy continues to struggle and demographic trends are likely to deepen Xi’s challenges in boosting consumption and a shaky property market. While Chinese tech giant Tencent says it’s beta-testing an integration with DeepSeek, DeepSeek is being pulled from markets like South Korea because of data and privacy concerns.

Government support alone doesn’t make for a strong business environment, but it plays a significant role in a state-controlled economy, especially in areas like green energy, manufacturing and tech. If Beijing is truly taking a more pro-business stance, that could impact the competitive landscape as much as tariffs.

More news below.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady, diane.brady@fortune.com, LinkedIn.

Top news

U.S.-Russia talks begin. In Saudi Arabia, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov is facing off against US secretary of state Marco Rubio in discussions over a peace plan to end Russia’s war against Ukraine. Lavrov has been Russia's foreign secretary for 21 years; Rubio has been America's secretary of state for less than a month.

Not on board: European leaders are meeting in Paris and Kyiv’s Zelenskyy is calling for Europe to arm itself against the Russian threat. Russia continued to bomb Kyiv today.

Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. The Telegraph claims to have obtained a leaked “contract” describing the price President Trump wants Ukraine to pay for ending the Russian bombardment. The document proposes a joint U.S.-Ukraine investment fund to exploit Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, said to be worth $500 billion. The U.S. would take 50% of any revenues generated via “a lien”. “That clause means ‘pay us first, and then feed your children’,” a source told The Telegraph. “Trump’s demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty,” the paper says.

The context: Ukraine has a lot of rare earth deposits and they’re completely untapped. An estimated 10% of the world’s lithium sits inside the war zone, the FT says.

Elon Musk has no official authority from the White House, according to a court filing made by the Trump Administration.

The Pope is sick. The 88-year-old was admitted to hospital in Rome with bronchitis but in fact has a "polymicrobial infection of the respiratory tract," the Vatican said.

Bird flu is coming. “There are now two strains circulating among mammals and birds. Though there are only 68 confirmed cases in people—largely dairy workers—public-health officials think bird flu is likely more widespread,” the WSJ reports.

Argentina President Javier Milei is under investigation for promoting a meme coin, $LIBRA, that generated a $4 billion market cap on launch until the majority holders of the token abruptly sold, netting themselves about $87 million in a rug-pull, and wiping out other speculators.

From Fortune

Tisch family appoints new Loews CEO
Ben Tisch, member of the $10.1 billion Tisch family, has officially become the third generation of his family to take the role of CEO at Loews Corporation. During the Fortune 500 company’s Q4 earnings remarks last week, Ben stated that believes the CEO has one job: “to grow intrinsic value per share.” Fortune

Meta will take EU complaints to Trump
Joel Kaplan, the new global policy chief at Meta, warned the EU at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday that any EU laws that the tech giant deems as discriminatory will be brought to the attention of President Trump. Meta has been the subject of over $3 billion data privacy and antitrust fines by the European Union. Fortune 

DOGE moves on the IRS
The IRS is reportedly considering allowing Elon Musk’s DOGE access to taxpayer information, per a report from the Washington Post. The report identifies one DOGE official, formerly a Databricks engineer, who is allegedly preparing to help the agency with engineering and IT consulting. Fortune

The markets

• The S&P 500 closed flat at 6,114.63 yesterday but tech stocks were up. The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.4%. Nvidia led the way, closing up 2.63%. Bitcoin is still sitting at $95.7K, seemingly unable to cross the $100K barrier again. Europe and Asia markets were mixed this morning. S&P 500 futures ticked up 0.24% pre-opening bell.

From the analysts

• Goldman Sachs on the U.S. economy: “Healthy revenue growth and a strong US consumer reaffirm that economic activity increased at a solid pace. Our own preferred guidepost for corporate business activity—real revenues excluding the volatile energy sector—rose at a healthy 3.2% year-over-year pace,” Jan Hatzius et al.
• Apollo on GDP: “... the economy remains strong. Consumers are in good shape, and year-over-year retail sales show steady growth … the Atlanta Fed GDP estimate for first quarter GDP and the Dallas Fed weekly estimate for GDP are at 2.3% and 2.5%, respectively,” per Torsten Sløk. “We are carefully monitoring trade war uncertainty, but so far, there are no signs that it is having a negative impact on the incoming data.”
• JP Morgan on U.S.-Europe trade: “The EU will likely offer concessions in the form of increased purchases of US LNG and military equipment but is unlikely to address underlying US grievances. In the event of US tariff hikes, the EU would hit back with very high tariffs on products that would hurt Trump’s political base,” according to Bruce Kasman et al.
• Claudia Sahm on inflation: “Keep calm. It’s one month of data. As Fed Chair Powell said last week, the Fed doesn’t overreact to a few months of good data or to a few months of bad data. We should not either. The January CPI was not good and slowed progress toward the Fed’s target. Even so, it is unlikely the start of a reacceleration in inflation.” Read the rest here.

Around the watercooler