Musk and US Business Leaders to Meet Xi Jinping at APEC

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, and other top executives of major U.S. companies gathered this week in San Francisco, where the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit is being held, to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Bloomberg News reported on the 14th (local time).

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

According to the report, major U.S. company representatives expected to attend the CEO Summit during this APEC summit include Musk, as well as Jane Fraser of Citigroup, Darren Woods of Exxon, and Satya Nadella of Microsoft (MS). They are anticipated to express their intentions to expand business in China, which had been restrained due to the deterioration of U.S.-China relations, during their contact with President Xi at the CEO Summit.

Sources said many CEOs were invited to a dinner with President Xi and that they could convey their concerns and expectations regarding Chinese business in a relatively informal setting. The APEC CEO Summit runs from the 14th to the 16th, with a gala reception scheduled for the 15th. Bloomberg reported, "Despite Washington's efforts to erect (export) barriers related to sensitive technology, they still want to tell President Xi that they view China as a very important market."

In particular, the APEC summit includes a face-to-face summit meeting between President Joe Biden and President Xi, raising expectations for a thaw in bilateral relations higher than ever. Dan Prudhomme, an assistant professor of business administration at Florida International University, said, "If President Xi meets with these business leaders at this summit, they will be looking for signals that U.S.-China relations are thawing."

Attention is also drawn to what kind of gifts President Xi, who is visiting the U.S. for the first time in over six years, might bring. Earlier, Chinese media reported that President Xi might resume purchasing Boeing 737 Max passenger planes, which had been banned since 2018. Recently, China also purchased more than 3 million tons of U.S. soybeans. There are also expectations that China will agree to resume the bilateral military dialogue channels that the U.S. has continuously requested, as well as cooperate in cracking down on fentanyl (a drug).

Bloomberg, citing sources, said it is unlikely that President Xi will officially announce the purchase of Boeing passenger planes at this meeting, but it will be an important breakthrough for Boeing.

On the day before the U.S.-China summit, President Biden expressed his willingness to improve relations during a press briefing at the White House, saying, "We are not trying to decouple (separate supply chains, etc.) from China," and "What we are trying to do is to make the relationship better."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.