2023-11-19 07:47:00
Tesla CEO Elon Musk (left) is shaking hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a business dinner held in San Francisco, USA on the 15th (local time)./CCTV capture
It was revealed that Tesla CEO Elon Musk was an ‘uninvited guest’ at the dinner event between Chinese President Xi Jinping and American businessmen held in San Francisco on the 15th (local time). Musk attended a VIP reception before the dinner and even shook hands with Xi Jinping, but left without eating. A source in Beijing who is familiar with the pre-coordination process for the dinner told this newspaper on the 18th, “Musk, who was not on the list of dinner participants pre-confirmed by the U.S. and China, came to the event venue without any plan and entered after some commotion.” “I could not have missed the opportunity to meet Xi Jinping, whom I had not been able to meet even during my visit to China,” he said.
On this day, Xi Jinping held a dinner with about 400 American businessmen in San Francisco on the occasion of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. This event was prepared as a special event by the National Committee on U.S.-China Trade and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, organizations representing American companies in China, and the participating businesspeople were selected by these organizations. Some foreign media interpreted that Musk left early to protest the Chinese side’s poor treatment.
However, in reality, it is said that Musk, whose name was not on the invitation list, came to the event on his own to meet Xi Jinping. A Beijing source said, “Musk brought his entourage to the site and asked to attend the VIP reception, and was eventually able to enter with the understanding of the American organization that hosted it and the Chinese side.” He added, “Musk said, ‘Face scan, celebrity. “It means using one’s reputation to forcefully obtain permission,” he explained. It appears that the reason he had to leave without being able to sit down for the meal was because there was no assigned seat. However, there is a possibility that Musk skipped the American organization that hosted the event and conveyed his intention to attend the dinner to the Chinese side. Musk is known to have established a communication channel with high-ranking Chinese officials by continuing his pro-China actions, such as building a Tesla factory in Shanghai and visiting China in May of this year.
The day after attending the event, Musk uploaded a scene of himself and Xi Jinping shaking hands from China’s state-run CCTV’s main news, ‘Xinwen Lianbo’, on X (old Twitter) and said, “May there be prosperity for all.” wrote: Tesla’s official account on Chinese social media Weibo said, “Chairman Xi met with Musk and other key figures at a separate event before the banquet and expressed support for Tesla’s development in China.”
This dinner event was proposed and hosted by two American organizations, not China. For this reason, members of these organizations were given priority at the head table where Xi Jinping sits, and Musk of Tesla, who is not a member, is said to have been excluded. The Chinese government reportedly shared a list of companies attending the dinner, but rarely intervened, such as requesting that specific companies be invited. An official from a global IT company in Beijing said, “The Chinese side was not significantly involved in the list of invited companies, meaning that this was a stage for President Xi’s speech and not a place for actual negotiations.”
Meanwhile, Apple CEO Tim Cook, who attended the dinner that day, said he would send a government relations executive instead until the last minute, but then changed his schedule. It is known that he, who recently visited China, was concerned about attending due to concerns about excessive ‘pro-China image’. Some analysts say that Tim Cook hesitated to meet Xi Jinping out of concern for public opinion in his country, and that Musk came to meet Xi Jinping even though he was not invited, revealing the duplicity of American companies in their approach to the Chinese market.
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