Corporate heads, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, look to take advantage of China’s post-COVID market opportunities
Corporate heads, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, look to take advantage of China’s post-COVID market opportunities
Nvidia Corp.’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang is rumored to be visiting China on Tuesday for the first time in four years. Incidentally, a slew of corporate head honchos have been heading to the country.
What Happened: China has held out a lot of promise for U.S. companies, given its status as a preferred base for production and its sizable market opportunity.
Here are a few top corporate executives who visited China in recent months:
China Lure: Most of the company heads are visiting China for the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The trips follow the country’s recent reopening. China, as the second-largest economy in the world and the second-most populous country, is a key market for many of these multinational corporations.
The country is also known for its skilled and cheap workforce, which makes manufacturing cheaper in the country. Tesla’s cheapest cars come from its Shanghai Giga factory. Apple still has a majority of its supply chain in China despite its best efforts to diversify away from the country due to simmering U.S.-China tensions and COVID-19 disruptions.
Beijing, for its part, has welcomed to corporate leaders as China works to prop up its economy following COVID-19 disruptions. The development also reflects a breakdown of U.S-China relations, which are at the lowest point in decades, a Financial Times report said.
“At a more strategic level, Beijing is trying to demonstrate that it is open for business, in defiance of what it says are U.S. containment efforts through export controls on high-technology items such as semiconductors,” the report said, citing analysts.
Despite the cordiality seen between China and corporate chiefs, government-level discussions between the two countries have been abysmally weak. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in early February postponed indefinitely a planned visit to China following the spy balloon incident.
Produced in association with Benzinga
Edited by Jessi Rexroad Shull and Sterling Creighton Beard