China pins growth hopes on struggling small businesses

Beijing’s hopes for an economic revival after recording slowing growth last year will depend in large part on the animal spirits of small and medium-sized enterprises, which account for the majority of output, urban employment and tax revenues but were hit hard by the pandemic.

While

’s best-known private-sector companies are tech giants such as Alibaba and Tencent, SMEs — officially defined as companies with 1,000 or fewer…