Governor Newsom Wraps Up Week-Long Chinese Visit

Governor Gavin Newsom returned to California Sunday night following a weeklong visit to China, coming directly from Shanghai where he visited Tesla’s gigafactory in the city.

Following an impromptu visit to Israel the previous week where he visited victims of the Israel-Hamas War, Newsom proceeded on to China to embark on a seven day climate and economic-based trip. Early last week, Newsom had meetings in Hong Kong over climate change and the economy and met with local leaders over electric vehicles and electric public transit in Guangdong. This was followed up by going to Beijing where he had meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, was joined by U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns in further climate talks, and visited the Great Wall. After this, Newsom went south to Jiangsu, where he visited an off-shore wind farm and a wetlands preserve before leaving for Shanghai via a high speed train. All the while, Newsom had also signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs) at nearly every stop.

Newsom proceeded to spend Sunday in Shanghai. Early in the day, Newsom signed the fifth MOU of the trip alongside Mayor Gong Zheng, with the Shanghai-California one being specifically about protecting the environment, combating climate change, advancing climate adaptation and resilience strategies and accelerating clean transportation action. Following that, Newsom visited Tesla’s Shanghai gigafactory where he and the California delegation toured the general assembly line and a battery pack facility. The trip was then capped off by a visit to Shanghai Pudong International Airport, where he met with United Airlines officials over new California-China flights before flying back to Sacramento.

“California’s partnership with Shanghai spans decades – back to 1980 when the late, great Senator Dianne Feinstein, then San Francisco’s Mayor, forged the San Francisco-Shanghai Sister City relationship — the first such relationship between cities in China and the United States,” remarked Newsom on Sunday. “This is a city I have visited many times, and each time I return, I am struck by the progress and transformation I see.

“California is proud to build on this tremendous partnership with Shanghai to accelerate climate action – cleaning up our ports, cutting emissions from shipping and speeding up our transition to electric vehicles.”

Overall, Newsom’s trip to China was seen as more negative than positive. While some outlets praised the trip as showing that progress with China was possible at a state-level and for heavily advancing California’s climate pledges, many others denounced it. Critics lambasted it as little more than publicity stunt to gain international experience ahead of a presidential run. Others pointed out that, outside of a few questions during a meeting in Beijing, Newsom had ignored critical issues such as human rights abuses, industrial espionage by China in California, fentanyl production, anti-democratic efforts throughout China, and the possible release of California pastor David Lin, who has been held prisoner in China since 2006.

In California, Chinese-Americans were particularly outraged at Newsom warming up to China, as many had been personally persecuted by the country, fled the country, or had relatives or family members who had been negatively affected by China in some way. As noted by Katy Grimes of the Globe, the trip was also widely mocked for being ‘cringe-inducing’, with the lasting image of the tour not being meeting with world leaders or visiting the Great Wall, but by crashing into a Chinese child while playing basketball in Beijing.

Experts on China told the Globe that while Newsom’s trip won’t go down as a failure, it won’t go down as a success either.

“Newsom did what he said he would do,” said James Francis, an East Asian economic analyst, to the Globe. “He did strengthen economic ties and put in the work on climate-related matters. He did that much. That’s why this trip isn’t going to go down as a failure. But it wasn’t a success. In large part it was a vanity trip. I mean, look at all the photos his office put out. This was pointed out by the Globe too, but a lot of them were glamor shots. Also, the media was locked out of the trip at several points. That’s not exactly good.”

“He could have really sent a message to China, something that a president would have done. He got part of it, working with them closer for economic benefit and climate reasons. But he didn’t set the lines. He didn’t bring up the hard issues enough and he didn’t put in boundaries showing how far California would go on many things. He was so hyperfocused on a few issues that going into others was an afterthought, and a leader should go beyond that. Meanwhile, the Chinese are viewing this as solely an economic benefit, with the environmental things only coming as an image thing. They do have better air quality now and people there are living longer because of it, which is something they like to highlight, but that is coming at the expense of building more coal plants far outside the radius of cities and people outside major population centers getting more harmed because of it. The Chinese always love a smokescreen to hide environmental issues, and this Newsom trip is another example.”

“When Nixon visited China in 1972 it was largely to help restart a relationship with a country during a time when the Soviet Union was making both countries wary of it. It was a big deal. The lasting images will be of Nixon meeting the leaders. Yeah, he had professional photographers there too, but it was also historic. The lasting image of Newsom on this trip? It’s him plowing into the Chinese kid playing basketball, especially on social media. And it is kind of a metaphor for his visit. He did as he said he would do, but when other things came up, he had no plan.”

Newsom is next expected to meet Chinese leaders next month at the APEC conference in San Francisco.