Dir.bg
Chinese Vice President Han Zheng held important discussions with US Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and tech billionaire Elon Musk on the eve of Republican Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president, the agencies reported.
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Trump’s transition team indicated that the focus of the talks was a number of issues such as trade between the two largest economies, regional stability and fentanyl, which has contributed significantly to the drug epidemic in the US.
According to the state news agency Xinhua, Han offered congratulations on behalf of President Xi Jinping, who sent him to represent China at the official ceremony in Washington.
On trade, Han acknowledged that there are tensions in the bilateral relationship on the issue, but he also highlighted common interests and the potential for cooperation between the two countries. Trump has threatened to impose new tariffs on Chinese goods once he takes office. At the same time, the newly elected US president made the seemingly conciliatory move of inviting Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend his inauguration.
Many of the most divisive bilateral issues involve trade, with Trump threatening to impose 60% tariffs on imports from China, but relations have also deteriorated over technology and China’s actions to assert its territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Han urged Tesla CEO Elon Musk, an adviser to Trump, to work to develop trade relations between the two countries, Chinese media reported. For electric car maker Tesla, China is a very important market.
In their meeting on Sunday, Khan told Musk, who was appointed by Trump to lead a department aimed at creating a more efficient US government, that he “welcomes Tesla (TSLA.O), opens a new chapter and other US companies” to “share the benefits of China’s development and contribute to Sino-US relations.”
Sending Khan to Trump’s inauguration, rather than an ambassador as usual, appears to be a carefully chosen signal that Beijing is ready to improve relations with Washington while not leaving Xi Jinping exposed to criticism if ties sour, the BBC notes.
While Xi did not attend Trump’s inauguration in person, the two held a phone call on Friday during which they discussed trade, fentanyl and TikTok. The Chinese social media app restored service to US users on Sunday, just hours after it went down in response to a federal ban that Trump said he would end with an executive order on Monday.
Musk, whose company Tesla operates a factory in Shanghai, posted on his X platform after the meeting that he had long opposed the ban on TikTok “because it goes against freedom of speech.”
“The current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America but X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced,” he wrote. “Something has to change.” X is banned in China along with other major American social media and news apps and websites, including YouTube, Google, Facebook and many major American media outlets.