Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is in China on his first visit to the world’s second-largest economy in over three years.
He arrived in Beijing on Tuesday and is also anticipated to visit Tesla’s massive Shanghai manufacturing facility.
Within hours of arrival in the country, the multibillionaire met China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang.
Mr. Musk has not yet commented publicly on the voyage, which coincides with heightened tensions between the United States and China.
He also declined to comment on Wednesday as he left a Beijing hotel.
Mr. Musk met with China’s industry minister Jin Zhuanglong on Wednesday evening to discuss the development of electric vehicles.
As of Wednesday midday, he has not tweeted since landing on Tuesday afternoon.
The ministry added that during the meeting, Mr. Musk compared the US and Chinese economies to “conjoined twins.
Mr. Musk has also been unusually silent on Twitter, which he owns and which has over 141 million followers.
Despite his reputation for regular tweeting, he has not posted since Tuesday afternoon.
The social media platform is prohibited in China, but Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) allow access.
Mr. Musk is the most recent prominent American executive to visit China. Tim Cook visited China in March, and Jamie Dimon is in China this week.
However, as tensions between Washington and Beijing increase, Tesla finds itself in a precarious position, according to Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities.
Mr. Ives added, “Wall Street is laser-focused on playing nice in the sandbox in Beijing so there are no disruptions to Tesla’s expansion in China in the coming years.”
Tesla’s first overseas production, the gigafactory in Shanghai, began building in January 2019.
The American company delivered its first Chinese-made cars later that year, marking a turning point.
Nonetheless, Covid lockdowns across the nation, including in the financial, manufacturing, and shipping center of Shanghai, made it increasingly challenging for manufacturers to operate.
Mr. Musk stated last year that the coronavirus lockdown in Shanghai was “extremely, extremely challenging” for Tesla. Which reportedly suspended the majority of production at its Giga factory for several weeks.
Since then, operations have resumed at the facility, which reportedly produced its one-millionth vehicle in August. This represented one-third of Tesla’s global output.
The company announced last month that it would construct a new facility in China to manufacture its “Megapack” batteries.
According to market research firm JATO, China has also become the largest market for Tesla’s Model Y mass-market electric vehicle.
China sold 94,000 Model Ys in the first three months of 2019, surpassing the US and Europe, according to JATO.
In recent years, Tesla’s dominance in the electric vehicle market has been threatened by increased competition from automakers such as Ford and General Motors, as well as new entrants such as China’s BYD and Nio.
Mr. Musk, who purchased Twitter last year for $44 billion (£35.5 billion), is under pressure to find a new leader for the company so he can focus on his other businesses, including Tesla and rocket company SpaceX.
This month, he appointed Linda Yaccarino, the former director of advertising at NBCUniversal, as the new CEO of the platform.
Ms. Yaccarino will be faced with the difficulty of operating a business that has struggled to be profitable. While under intense scrutiny for how it handles misinformation and hate speech.
Fidelity Investments, which financed Mr. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, says it’s worth about a third of what he spent.
