Even before President Xi Jinping met with leading Chinese entrepreneurs on Feb. 17, investors began piling into technology shares, betting that a years-long crackdown on the private sector was at an end.

China’s Communist Party has a history of purging then welcoming back senior officials. Deng Xiaoping was purged three times before leading the country out of Maoism in the late 1970s. Some cadres are welcomed back years after their death.