Newsom’s China trip to include Hong Kong, Tesla stops

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) will tour China next week on a climate-focused trip that will include stops at a Shanghai Tesla factory and Hong Kong University, his administration announced Tuesday.

The trip takes place against a backdrop of chilly U.S.-China relations, although tensions have thawed somewhat in recent weeks with visits by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a congressional delegation led by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). President Joe Biden is also hoping to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping next month at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco.

Newsom administration officials said he would steer clear of engaging on hot-button issues like technology transfers, trade subsidies and human rights issues in Hong Kong and China's Xinjiang province, even as he plans facility tours in the type of renewable energy and clean transportation industries that have figured in trade conflicts.

Officials said the trip would focus on climate policy collaborations and bolstering ties between China and California which stretch back over fifteen years to when former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) was in office.

“The trip is wholly focused on climate, and we are obviously a state, so I think we look to our federal partners on federal issues,” spokesperson Erin Mellon told reporters Tuesday.

The trip will be Newsom’s second formal international trip in his official capacity as governor, after a visit to El Salvador in 2019. He'll visit six cities in five provinces, including Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Shanghai. He'll be accompanied by his climate adviser, Lauren Sanchez, as well as representatives from California industry and environmental groups, Mellon said.

Newsom also plans to renew four climate-related agreements established by former Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and will sign a fresh one of his own with Shanghai, where he traveled with the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) in 2005 when he was mayor of San Francisco.

Notable stops on the trip include Hong Kong, the first city in Asia to require businesses to disclose their carbon emissions — similar to a law Newsom signed earlier this month covering businesses in California — and Shenzhen, the first city in the world to fully transition to electric buses.

Newsom will also do some wetland bird watching in the coastal city of Yangchen while discussing shared priorities related to a global pact to conserve 30 percent of oceans and land. And he'll visit the Great Wall of China with leaders from five different provinces, although it remains unclear if there will be an opportunity to go tobogganing nearby as former First Lady Michelle Obama did back in 2014.

Sanchez said Newsom will be meeting with representatives from the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and the Environment in Beijing, as well as local officials.

He'll also renew an MOU with China’s National Development and Reform Commission, China’s agency in charge of macroeconomic planning, and another from 2013 with Beijing on air quality, which facilitated collaboration between California Air Resources Board officials and Chinese regulators to reduce the city’s smog. She didn't say whether he would meet with Xi.

“A lot of what China has done [in the EV space] is actually borne out of California's innovation on ZEV mandates from the '90s,” Mellon said. “But clearly, they have kind of jumped ahead in terms of adoption of electric vehicles both by individuals as well as the government.”