Special Feature | Deloitte China Chair Jiang Ying: “Revitalizing Strength + New Strength + Heart Strength” Co-Creating “People-Centric Leadership for the New Generation” in the AI Era

Chinese entrepreneurs in 2026 are standing at an unprecedented crossroads in history. Al is shifting from generating content in the virtual world toward production-capability tools in the physical world, as geopolitical conflict and protectionism are reshaping global trade and commerce. How can China’s top private enterprises, in this context, become friends of time and society, deepen their global networks, and lead the development of the industry? Jing Jiang, Deloitte China’s Chair and a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference for nine consecutive years, recently accepted our invitation and shared her meticulous observations of China’s top private enterprises and her systematic thinking.

Member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Chair of Deloitte China Jing Jiang

In her view, private enterprises are a highly energetic part of China’s economic innovation ecosystem, with advantages such as being highly sensitive to the market and having relatively agile operations and management. Deloitte China has long accompanied and supported the development of China’s private enterprises. In particular, since it introduced the Best Managed Companies (hereinafter referred to as “BMC”) program in 2018, over the past seven years it has cumulatively identified 74 outstanding management enterprises and “hidden champions” across various sub-sectors, continuously decoding the underlying logic behind how they maintain vitality and competitiveness.

However, to achieve long-term, sustainable development, private enterprises need to pay even more attention to value creation. She has summarized three directions that private enterprises can enhance: “xingli” builds a business civilization with Chinese characteristics; “xinli” focuses on unleashing new-quality productive forces; and “xinli” deepens the human-centered organization and leadership capabilities. Below are excerpts from the interview:

**Private Chinese Companies: Build Resilience at the Foundation and Reshape the Big Picture
**

HBRC: Based on your research and observations, what highlights and optimistic aspects in the current Chinese economy have impressed you most?

Jing Jiang: In 2025, relying on Deloitte’s professional services network and think tank platform, and drawing on the channels for fulfilling duties through the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, we continued to conduct solid frontline research. I focused in particular on groups of private enterprises and formed recommendations around two key directions: first, how private enterprises can participate in major national science and technology breakthroughs; and second, how they can respond to challenges brought by external uncertainties—for example, the challenges of a tariff war. I also visited on-site companies in the real economy and manufacturing sectors in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shanghai, and other places, and held one-on-one in-depth exchanges with the heads of multiple BMC award-winning companies.

From the research, the resilience and vitality of private enterprises are truly impressive. The outstanding private entrepreneurs I encountered showed three key traits: first, an optimistic mindset, with long-term judgment about market trends; second, strong drive—maintaining entrepreneurial passion even in complex environments; and third, forward-looking planning, demonstrating continuous learning capability and maturity.

The Trap of Internal Involution and AI’s Wild Acceleration:

**How can companies break the “life-or-death” crisis of value creation?
**

HBRC: You’ve interacted with many high-quality companies across different types and sizes. Do these companies now have common anxieties that span industries and scale?

Jing Jiang: Anxiety about internal involution, going global, and high-quality development is widespread among entrepreneurs. But fundamentally, these anxieties all point to one core proposition: how can a company achieve a leap in value that is high quality, high value, and high efficiency. The encouraging part is that more and more companies have become clearly aware that internal involution has no way out, and they are actively exploring solutions—either shifting from competition based on a single product to a comprehensive competitive model of “products + service integration,” achieving differentiation by adding competitive dimensions; or integrating the industrial chain to build systemic advantages. For example, Anta Group’s globalization is a set of unique, transferable, and replicable business model built on “brand + retail.” The group adheres to a brand-centered governance model, fully authorizing brands to make independent decisions so that each brand can maintain its distinctiveness and creativity. Meanwhile, the group builds shared platforms, forming scale advantages and coordinated efficiency in its back and middle ends—such as supply chain, digitization, finance, human resources, and risk management. The combination of “brand vitality” and “platform efficiency” is Anta Group’s core competitive advantage that distinguishes it from traditional single-brand companies.

To break out of the impasse, companies need to focus on three key areas: first, precisely capture the mismatched spaces between demand and supply to achieve differentiated positioning; second, enhance comprehensive integration capability and drive the coordinated re-engineering of technology, management, and processes, rather than upgrading a single point of technology; and third, improve competition rules and pricing mechanisms, breaking the “only low-price wins bidding” trap, and incorporating value metrics such as quality, technology, carbon efficiency, and total costs over the full lifecycle into the evaluation system. We have advised the government to introduce diversified value metrics into areas such as industrial policy, financial support, bidding and procurement, reduce the weight of price, and embed value into the rules. Companies themselves also need to shift value judgment from single-point pricing to systemic capabilities, focusing on systemic value such as operations and maintenance, services, and long-term returns—for instance, Costco lets consumers “pay for value” through a curated assortment and a membership system.

Only value creation can truly help companies escape internal involution. That is also the deeper motivation for entrepreneurs to actively pay attention to and embrace AI.

HBRC: Today, AI development is accelerating by the week. Entrepreneurs are, on the one hand, paying attention to and embracing it, while on the other hand experiencing “fear of missing out.” Based on your observations, what state are Chinese companies’ AI applications in right now, and are there any good response strategies?

Jing Jiang: At present, corporate AI applications have moved from trial and error with single tools to large-scale penetration. The core trend is a shift toward “AI-native,” embedding AI into the underlying logic of how a business develops, rather than making patchwork technical fixes. Companies no longer get stuck on model selection and product comparison; instead, they focus on how to deeply integrate AI into strategy, processes, and organizations to drive systemic change. For example, in BMC award-winning companies, Lenovo has built full-stack capabilities of “everything as a service.” Whether it’s products such as AI PCs and servers, or enterprise-oriented services, behind them is Lenovo’s end-to-end capability construction—from servers, storage, and network equipment to hybrid cloud solutions, edge computing, and AI optimization.

Of course, corporate AI applications still face multiple challenges: first, the difficulty of balancing investment returns; second, AI credibility and ethical risks; third, the need to increase the value of human judgment in human-machine collaboration; and fourth, the urgent need for the CEO/one top executive to participate deeply. As AI transformation is a systemic project, only when the top management actively learns and personally pushes it forward can it penetrate organizational silos and achieve real implementation.

What is worth affirming is that entrepreneurs have strong resilience in the face of technological change. While they may have anxiety, they rarely take a passive stance of watching from the sidelines. Instead, they plan proactively and respond actively—this is precisely the core driving force for business development. Beyond AI, external variables such as fluctuations in geopolitics and swings in prices of bulk commodities are also testing companies’ resolve. However, excellent entrepreneurs understand how to “build internal strength,” and by deeply cultivating core competitiveness, focusing on value creation, and advancing market diversification, they create certainty within the company to offset external uncertainty. This is the fundamental approach to responding to changing conditions.

xingli, xinli, and xinli:

**“New-Generation People-Centered Leadership” in the AI Era
**

HBRC: In the face of these problems and anxieties, what solutions do private enterprises have? Which areas need attention for improvement?

Jing Jiang: I summarize the areas where private enterprises can improve as “xingli, xinli, and xinli,” to achieve “new people-centered leadership” in the AI era.

First, “xingli”: taking “prosperity” as the core of “xing,” it advocates a business civilization with Chinese characteristics. Enterprises need to integrate social responsibility and long-termism into the underlying logic of development, break negative labels such as “internal involution” and “price-only competition,” and let products and services drive social progress. Going-global strategies also shift from simple “globalization” to deeper, “one country, one approach” cultivation. For example, in BMC award-winning company Kingfa Science & Technology, as a “hidden champion” in chemical new materials, it has taken root in the Indian market for 8 years. The key is finding a local team that fits, creating jobs and delivering local value through localized operations. This is a vivid example of long-termism and business civilization.

Second, “xinli”: taking “new” as the focus of “xin,” focusing on new-quality productive forces that build on both “new and old,” and echoing the “smart economic ecosystem” first proposed in the government work report. Its core is embodied in four “highs”: high intelligence, high efficiency, high value, and high greenness. The most prominent shortcoming among Chinese companies today lies in “high value.” Many companies may achieve high efficiency and high greenness, but still struggle to escape low-price traps, because the root cause is weak brand value. BMC award-winning company San Nong Group provides a reference sample. As a leading enterprise in China’s white-feather broiler industry, San Nong’s development centers on “rooted innovation.” It independently cultivated our country’s first batch of white-feather broiler breeding lines, “Shengze 901,” and an upgraded version, “Shengze 901Plus.” Four indicators—feed-to-meat ratio, laying rate, growth speed, and disease resistance—are all at internationally leading levels. San Nong has built the world’s most complete full industrial chain, enabling prevention, control, and traceability for the entire process from breeding lines to the dinner table. With its industrial-chain advantages and high-quality services, it has become a core supplier to leading catering brands.

Third, “xinli”: using “people’s hearts” as the “xin” to strengthen the foundation of talent and organizations. How far a company can go depends largely on building talent pipelines. However, in the context of rapid digitization and AI development, the difficulty of talent cultivation has increased sharply: insufficient motivation for school-enterprise cooperation, and companies falling into a misunderstanding of “only screening, not cultivating.” Worse still, some companies prioritize technical deployment over the value of people, and in the long run this will inevitably weaken core competitiveness. Therefore, I propose “Human Leadership,” emphasizing people-oriented principles: technology must serve people, not replace them. Enterprises should continuously enhance people’s capabilities, create new growth curves, and give employees room to perform so they can also experience a sense of meaningfulness and belonging.

Finally, Zhao Jian, Managing Partner of Deloitte China’s BMC program and a world-class consulting expert partner, added that the waves of AI and globalization are forcing companies to redefine management. This is key to enhancing core competitiveness. Chinese companies face overlapping challenges: “basic catch-up lessons,” “local experimentation,” and “benchmarking-based evolution.” In the future, management upgrades for leading companies should focus on four dimensions: first, new culture management, forming new value consensus in a fragmented era and consolidating Z-generation employees’ identification; second, new R&D management, from technology R&D to comprehensive innovation, building new models for innovation organizations and a systematic innovation work system based on cross-disciplinary innovation; third, new talent resources management, shifting from “using people as tools” to focusing on employees’ happiness index, creating a positive loop between happiness and high performance; and fourth, truly strategic management—pushing companies to move from opportunity-driven development to long-term strategic-driven development, addressing the dilemma that “70–80% of enterprises have only an operating plan and no strategy.”

Over the years, Deloitte has deepened its focus on China’s private enterprise ecosystem. Through initiatives such as the BMC program, it continues to track the innovation and upgrade paths of leading private enterprises. It co-creates with companies and explores together breakthrough growth approaches. With these accumulated case experiences and forward-looking insights, we hope to share them with more Chinese enterprises and help them move steadily and go far in their journey of high-quality development.

Cheng Mingxia | Dialogue   Qi Qi | Copywriting   Gui Yan | Planning

AD