Trump’s Tesla Display at the White House Revives Memories of Musk in Beijing

When President Trump hawked some Teslas at the White House on Tuesday, it evoked a similar scene from Beijing’s main government compound years earlier, when a top Chinese leader was also photographed alongside Elon Musk examining one of the company’s electric vehicles.

In January 2019, China’s No. 2 official at the time, Li Keqiang, met with Mr. Musk in the Hall of Purple Light, a pavilion for foreign dignitaries inside the Communist Party’s leadership compound known as Zhongnanhai. A photograph on a Chinese government website shows Mr. Li peering at a Tesla as Mr. Musk, the company’s chief executive, looks on approvingly.

During that meeting, Mr. Li said that he hoped Mr. Musk could promote the “stability of China-U.S. relations” and offered the billionaire a Chinese green card, according to the state news media outlet CGTN.

It was a sign of how crucial China was to Tesla’s future at the time. Mr. Musk had just broken ground on a Tesla factory in Shanghai, which was granted unusually favorable conditions by the Chinese government and has since become the company’s most important manufacturing facility in the world. Beijing ensured Tesla low-interest loans, overhauled ownership rules so that the company could set up without a local partner and granted changes that Tesla had sought on emissions regulations.

It was the second time that Teslas had been displayed in Zhongnanhai. A year earlier, Mr. Musk had posted a photo of himself standing in front of Teslas in the Hall of Purple Light. He had just met with Wang Qishan, China’s vice president at the time. They had a “profoundly interesting discussion of history, philosophy & luck,” Mr. Musk wrote on social media.

These days, Tesla is struggling in both China, where sales are plunging amid fierce domestic competition, and in the United States, where Mr. Musk’s politics have set off protests and violence at Tesla dealerships and charging stations.

There was at least one major difference between the Beijing and Washington Tesla shows, however. At the White House, Mr. Musk donned a T-shirt and baseball cap. At Zhongnanhai, he wore a suit.

Joy Dong contributed research.