On February 17, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, held a symposium for private entrepreneurs in mainland China. Surprisingly, Li Yanhong, the founder of Baidu, one of the leading internet technology companies in China, was not invited to attend. This incident has sparked widespread speculation and had an impact on Baidu’s stock price. On that day, Baidu’s stock price in the Hong Kong stock market plummeted by nearly 7%, causing a loss of $2.4 billion in market value.
According to reports from mainland Chinese media, the prominent private entrepreneurs who attended the symposium included Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, Ningde Times Chairman Zeng Yuqun, Liang Wenfeng, founder of AI model company DeepSeek, Ma Huateng, founder of Tencent, Ren Zhengfei, CEO of Huawei, Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, Liu Yonghao, chairman of New Hope Group, Yu Renrong, chairman of Shanghai Weir Semiconductor, Wang Xing, CEO of Hangzhou Yushu Technology, and Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi.
Reuters reported that two sources familiar with the matter said that Li Yanhong did not attend the symposium convened by Xi Jinping. Baidu did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment on this matter.
It is reported that investors closely monitor whether senior executives of Chinese private enterprises attend these important meetings. Any absence of company executives can lead to speculation about the company’s status in the market. A brokerage sales director at a regional brokerage firm believes that Baidu’s senior executives missing this private enterprise symposium could lead to speculation that the company has lost its significant market position.
After the news of Li Yanhong’s absence from the symposium spread, concerns arose in the market about Baidu’s policy support and industry position. Baidu’s stock price in the Hong Kong market plummeted on that day, dropping by 8.8% at one point during the trading session. Although the end-of-day decline slightly narrowed, it still reached 6.94%, resulting in a market value loss of $2.4 billion, decreasing to HK$252.05 billion, making it the biggest loser in both the Hang Seng Index and the Hang Seng Tech Index that day.
Furthermore, Baidu announced the full integration of its search engine with the latest deep search capabilities of DeepSeek and the Wenxin large model, which the market interpreted as Baidu possibly losing its competitive advantage in the field of AI, further exacerbating investors’ concerns.