Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
Tesla CEO Elon Musk met with China’s Vice President Han Zheng in Washington on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Han Zheng is attending Monday’s inauguration as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s envoy and has also met with U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance.
Han told the chief executive of Tesla and the owner of the social media platform X — which is banned in China — that he “welcomed Tesla and other U.S. companies to seize the opportunities and share in the benefits of China’s development, and contribute to the growth of China-U.S. economic and trade relations.”
In early December, when the Tesla China team achieved the second-strongest sales week with nearly 22,000 vehicles registered, Musk praised the result on X, writing, “Great work by Tesla China.”
According to a statement from China’s Foreign Ministry, the representative also noted that the “extensive common interests and enormous space of cooperation” between the two nations in economic and trade relations, despite “some disagreements and frictions.”
Over the weekend, Musk commented on the operations halt of the Chinese app TikTok in the United States. The X owner said he has been “against a TikTok ban for a long time” claiming “it goes against freedom of speech.”
However, he named it as “unbalanced” that TikTok “is allowed to operate in America, but ‘X’ is not allowed to operate in China.”
Tesla unveiled earlier this month its highly awaited refreshed version of the Model Y SUV and began shipping last week the first units from its Giga Shanghai factory to showrooms across China.
Tesla China’s sales increased by 18.9% in December, rising from 78,856 vehicles in November to 93,766 vehicles, according to data from China’s Passenger Car Association.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
