Wu Jinglian, the 88-year-old Dean of pro-market Chinese economists, at a forum last month said to Liu He, China’s economic czar, said that “unharmonious voices” were now condemning private enterprise. Wu Jinglian added “The phenomenon is worth noting.” According to a transcript Ma Jiantang, the top party official at the State Council's think tank the Development Research Center at the same forum said private enterprises are plagued by concerns and “dissatisfaction.” Hu Deping, son of former Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang and former deputy head of the United Front Work Department,, wrote in an essay posted online on September 27, “If a trend forms and no one dares to criticize it, the consequences will be terrible. The private sector is experiencing great difficulties right now.  “We should try our best not to replicate the nationalization of private enterprise in the 1950s and the state capitalism.” The same day Hu Deping delivered a speech called “Remaining Alert to New Joint State-Private Ownership Under the Banner of Sharing”

Meanwhile some intellectuals are calling for private enterprises to be abolished entirely.In January, Zhou Xincheng, a Professor of Marxism at Renmin University in Beijing, declared that private ownership should be eliminated. In September, Wu Xiaoping, then an unknown blogger, wrote that the private sector should be ended now that it had accomplished its historic mission of achieving growth. Mr. Wu’s blog went viral. On September 11, Qiu Xiaoping, Vice Minister of Human Resources and Social Security, urged “democratic management” of private enterprises and suggested that employees of private companies should “participate in the management of enterprises, and share in the fruits of enterprise development". They should be jointly run by business owners and their employees. 

China has also taken steps to gain greater control over its technology sector, which flourished largely free from government influence. Approvals of new video game titles have been frozen since a shift in regulation that has given the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department a direct role over the government's approval process. Tencent, China’s video game giant and one of the world’s largest technology companies, has lost nearly one-third of its market value. Tencent declined to comment. The authorities have also tightened rules governing online commerce. A new law requires those who run online stores to register with the government and pay taxes. 

According to the Shanghai Securities News, an official government newspaper, so far this year 46 private companies have agreed to sell shares to state-controlled firms, with more than half selling controlling stakes.  The All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce cautioned that today, the private sector contributes nearly two-thirds of the country’s growth and nine-tenths of new jobs.

In an apparent move to reassure private owners, Chinese President Xi Jinping on September 27, while visiting a facility owned by China National Petroleum Corporation,  said Beijing would still support them and “Such statements as ‘there should be no state-owned enterprises’ and ‘we should have smaller-scale state-owned enterprises’ are wrong and slanted.”