Since China raised the majority of its pandemic-era travel constraints in January, foreign executives have actually been swarming in. And Musk had great factor to go: China is an essential part of Tesla’s electric-vehicle empire, both as a market and as a production powerhouse. However as the owner of Starlink, SpaceX, and just recently Twitter, Musk has a far more complex relationship with the nation.
There’s little details in English about Musk’s China journey. That’s mainly due to the fact that Musk, typically active on the social networks platform he simply obtained, remained really peaceful throughout the entire journey. While Twitter is prohibited in China, individuals have all sorts of VPN tools to access it. Still, Musk didn’t appear to wish to offer the impression that he was on Twitter while there. He just tweeted a single time about the journey, after he left China. In truth, he even stopped talking about other tweets– something he generally does lots of times every day.
However from the general public readouts published by Chinese federal government sites and sightings of Musk shared on Chinese social networks, we can rebuild his journey from Tuesday to Thursday.
He had rather a hectic travel plan: in 44 hours, Musk met a minimum of 3 top-level Chinese authorities, dined with the CEO of the world’s biggest EV battery provider, and checked out Tesla’s factory in Shanghai, to name a few things.
Musk’s personal jet landed in Beijing on the afternoon of Might 30, regional time. He met Qin Gang, China’s brand-new foreign minister and previous ambassador to the United States, the very same day. According to the ministry’s news release, Musk stated in the conference that he highly opposes decoupling supply chains in between the United States and China, due to the fact that the 2 nations are “interlinked, like adjoined twins inseparable from each other.” That night, he had supper with Zeng Yuqun, the CEO of CATL, which is an essential provider of batteries to Tesla cars and trucks.
CHINESE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The next day, he met 2 more Chinese ministers, those in charge of commerce and innovation. Reuters reported that he likewise checked out Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang– China’s sixth-highest-ranking celebration authorities– that afternoon, however the conference has actually not been revealed by the federal government or Musk. At night, he flew to Shanghai and headed to the Tesla Gigafactory, where he took pictures with staff members that he would later on publish on Twitter.
ELON MUSK VIA TWITTER
On the early morning of June 1, his last day in China, Musk squeezed in one last conference with Chen Jining, the Shanghai celebration secretary, prior to his jet left for Texas at 11:23 a.m.
Musk is not the very first American executive to check out China this year: prior to him, there were Apple’s Tim Cook, General Motors’s Mary Barra, JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon, Starbucks’s Laxman Narasimhan, and more. However up until now, Musk has actually gotten the most significant welcome, both from Chinese federal government authorities and from individuals on Chinese social networks.