Chinese stocks soared Tuesday as Beijing pledged to ramp up measures to bolster China’s sputtering economy.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index surged more than 3%, China’s tech-heavy ChiNext rose 1.8% and the Shanghai Composite Index increased 1.81% on Tuesday morning in Asia.

Chinese property developers Country Garden and Longfor soared 14.3% and 20.7% respectively. Sunac rose 12.5%, China Vanke was up 11.02% and China Overseas Land and Investment grew 11.39%.

A day earlier, Chinese real estate stocks tumbled on renewed debt fears. The Chinese government cracked down on the property sector’s debt levels in August 2020.

The stock rebound comes after China’s top leaders pledged on Monday to ramp up policy support to boost domestic consumption as the post Covid rebound has been slower than expected.

According to official data, China’s gross domestic product in the second quarter increased 6.3% from a year ago, performing worse than the 7.3% economists predicted. This was a 0.8% growth from the first quarter, and was slower than the 2.2% quarter-on-quarter pace recorded in the January to March period.

China’s top leaders met Monday for the much-anticipated Politburo meeting and hinted at moves to “adjust and optimize” property policy in what the leadership called a “torturous” economic recovery.

State news agency Xinhua quoted the 24-member Politburo as saying “the economy is facing new difficulties and challenges.” That’s mainly due to weak domestic demand, operational challenges for companies as well as “a grim and complex external environment,” it said.

“The meeting emphasized that it is necessary to actively expand domestic demand, give full play to the basic role of consumption in driving economic growth, expand consumption by increasing residents’ income,” according to Xinhua.

“It is necessary to boost the consumption of automobiles, electronic products, and home furnishing, and promote the consumption of services such as sports, leisure, and cultural tourism,” said the report.

Hong Kong-listed shares of internet giants rose on Tuesday. Alibaba shares soared 4.7%, while Tencent was up nearly 4%. Meituan and Baidu shares were higher by 5.7% and 6.8% respectively.

In the electric vehicle space, Xpeng soared 11%, Li Auto was up 4.15% and BYD rose 2%.

“This is a reconfirmation that the [Chinese] policymakers have heard the market concern on more support needed for the domestic economy,” said Xiaolin Chen, head of international at KraneShares, on CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” Tuesday.

“They want to achieve the 5% GDP target of this year. The first job they need to do is to create jobs for the labor force in China,” said Chen.

“I do certainly see some encouraging language released from the statement that removed a lot of the concerns of people having a high focus on real estate market, employment, private investment, and so on. So far, the language has been encouraging.”

China is ramping up measures aimed at boosting its economy ahead of a key Politburo meeting this week which will review the country’s first half economic performance.

In the past week, authorities have announced a series of pledges targeted at specific sectors or aimed at reassuring private and foreign investors of a more favorable investment environment — but they were largely broad measures, with some lacking concrete details.

Chinese leaders have also signaled in recent weeks they are likely to be judicious and targeted in their policy support.

Here are some of the key measures released by the Chinese government in recent weeks.

On Monday, China’s economic planning agency announced a series of measures to promote private investment.

This follows a rare joint pledge on Wednesday, between the Chinese government and the Communist Party, which vowed to treat private companies the same as state-owned enterprises. Beijing also pledged to ensure fair treatment in areas ranging from intellectual property and land rights to financing and labor supply.

In a 17-point statement Monday, the National Development and Reform Commission pledged to attract more private capital to participate in the construction of major national projects and key industrial chain supply chain projects.

The NDRC said it will support private investment in sectors — such as transportation, water conservancy, clean energy, new infrastructure, advanced manufacturing and modern agriculture facilities.

The agency is also encouraging private investment projects to issue real estate investment trusts (REITS) in the infrastructure sector to promote asset diversification and further broaden investment and financing channels for private investment.

The People’s Bank of China and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange last Thursday adjusted their cross-broader financing guidelines to allow companies to borrow more from foreign sources.

Business sentiment has generally soured amid lackluster economic growth after China’s initial recovery following its exit from “zero Covid” faltered.

The last three years have also seen heavy-handed crackdowns on internet platform companies including ecommerce giant Alibaba; the education and gaming sectors as well as real estate developers.

“After making life more difficult for many private firms in recent years, China’s leadership is shifting course and has made high-level pledges to improve the business environment,” Julian Evans-Pritchard, head of China Economics at Capital Economics, wrote in a Friday note.

“But although parts of the service sector would benefit from a more supportive official stance, much of the current caution among private firms reflects wider economic headwinds against which regulatory tweaks are of limited use,” he added.

Last Monday, official data showed China’s GDP for the second quarter grew 6.3% from a year ago, missing market expectations for 7.3%. It marked a 0.8% growth compared to the first quarter, and was slower than the 2.2% quarter-on-quarter pace recorded in the January to March period.

Even with a low base from last year, given the Covid lockdown in Shanghai at that time, retail sales growth slowed significantly to 3.1% in June from a year before, compared to 12.7% in May.

Last week, within hours of the NDRC statement, China’s Commerce Ministry followed with an joint announcement with a dozen other government departments, announcing an 11-point plan to boost the domestic consumption of household consumer goods and services.

This included a directive to local governments to step up the renovation of old homes, a pledge to encourage improvements to online commercial platforms, and developing the concept of “15-minute cities.”

During a special press conference on Friday, the NDRC released a 10-point plan to increase car ownership, particularly for “new-energy” vehicles.

This will include improving the capacity of rural power grids, reducing the costs associated with purchasing and charging electric vehicles.

In June, Beijing extended tax breaks for the purchases of electric vehicles.

SoftBank Group chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son on Wednesday said that the Japanese investment firm plans to shift from “defense mode” to “offense mode” and wants to capitalize on the AI revolution.

“Now, the time has come to shift to offense mode,” Son said during a shareholders’ annual general meeting.

“In the past few years, we focused on being [on] ‘defense.’ Three years ago, we didn’t have a lot of cash on hand. But because we have been in defense mode, we have built our cash on hand to five trillion yen ($35.3 billion),” Son said.

“We are ready to shift to offense mode. I am excited about that,” said Son.

The tech conglomerate, which engages in venture capital investing through its Vision Fund, has had its fair share of ups and downs. It was in “defense mode” as it halted new investments and trimmed its stake in Alibaba. In May, the Vision Fund reported a record $32 billion loss.

“What I am interested in most, what I am working on most, is the AI revolution. I believe that mankind is going to be exceeded by computer or AI,” said Son.

“We would like to be [in] the leading position for the AI revolution,” said Son.

SoftBank shares rose 2.63% in Wednesday morning trade.

The Vision Fund has invested in Chinese tech firms and therefore was hit by Beijing’s crackdown on the country’s tech sector and the subsequent plunge in share prices. SoftBank’s portfolio companies include ByteDance, DiDi Grocery, Coupang and more.

SoftBank is gearing up for the IPO of Arm, the U.K.-based chip design firm it acquired in 2016. Arm filed for the listing in the U.S. SoftBank’s CFO Yoshimitsu Goto said the IPO process is “going smoothly.”

Artificial intelligence has seen explosive growth in recent months, fueled by chatbot ChatGPT’s virality. ChatGPT has amazed researchers and the general public with its ability to generate humanlike responses to users’ prompts.

Son said on Tuesday that he is “a heavy user of ChatGPT” and that ChatGPT is “amazing.”

“The fortunes of SoftBank [are] looking to turn,” said Amir Anvarzadeh, Japan equity market strategist at Asymmetric Advisors on CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” Wednesday after SoftBank’s shareholders’ meeting.

“You can see why Nvidia wanted to buy Arm a few years back because obviously, they wanted all of the architecture to themselves. Now it kind of makes sense, looking back.” The U.S. chip maker had dropped out of the $40 billion deal to acquire Arm.

“$30 billion is what we thought could be what Arm is worth. I reckon now, even $60 billion, might not seem too insane, given the backdrop,” said Anvarzadeh.

Eddie Wu will succeed Daniel Zhang as chief executive of Alibaba Group, while Joe Tsai will take Zhang’s place as the group’s chairman, China’s largest e-commerce company announced Tuesday.

Wu is one of Alibaba’s co-founders and currently chairman of Taobao and Tmall Group. Brooklyn Nets owner Tsai is currently Alibaba’s executive vice chairman.

Zhang will continue to lead the Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group as chairman and chief executive after this change, which the company said will take effect Sept. 10.

This surprise succession announcement comes after Alibaba said in March it will split its company into six business groups. The company explained at that time that this will allow each business group to raise outside funding and go public in the most significant reorganization in the Chinese e-commerce giant’s history.

Wu has held a multitude of roles in his time at the company, including heading technology at Alibaba’s inception, as well as chief technology officer at Alipay and Taobao. He was also director of Alibaba Health Information Technology and founded Vision Plus Capital, a venture capital firm focused on investing in advanced technologies, enterprise services and digital healthcare.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

Alibaba shares dropped nearly 3% in after-hours trading after regulatory files revealed that SoftBank has sold a majority of its stake in the company.

SoftBank has sold roughly $7.2 billion worth of shares in the Chinese ecommerce giant via prepaid forward contracts, according to an analysis of the corporate filings by The Financial Times, published on Wednesday. Because of the sales, the report noted that SoftBank will now only maintain a 3.8% stake in Alibaba, which has a market cap over nearly $250 billion.

It was only about three years ago that SoftBank maintained a nearly 25% stake in the tech giant worth over $100 billion. At the time, Alibaba was SoftBank’s most valuable investment.

But over the years, SoftBank and its Vision Fund have been posting huge quarterly losses amid a slowdown in the tech sector that has hammered valuations. In February, the Vision Fund posted a pretax loss of 660 billion Japanese yen (or about $5 billion), marking the unit’s fourth consecutive quarterly loss.

At the time, Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of the Japanese technology conglomerate and holding company, said SoftBank would operate in a “defense” mode and be more “conservative.”

Son invested $20 million in Alibaba in 2000, helping the e-commerce startup grow into one of the world’s biggest tech companies.

In March, Alibaba said it would split into six business groups, with each unit able to receive its own funding and potentially go public. The move was “designed to unlock shareholder value and foster market competitiveness,” Alibaba said in a statement.

In 2020, Son stepped down from Alibaba’s board, shortly after Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma resigned from SoftBank’s board.

Watch: AI could help Alibaba boost growth in cloud business.