Chinese premier offers Elon Musk ‘green card’

TESLA chief executive officer Elon Musk was offered “a green card” by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Sin Chew Daily reported.

Li met Musk after Tesla broke ground at its Gigafactory 3 project in Shanghai, its first base outside the United States to produce electric cars.

Musk was quoted as saying that he loved China and wished that he could visit the country more often.

Li then said China could issue him a “Chinese green card”, offering him permanent residency in China.

The premier said Tesla’s facility in Shanghai would be the first car plant in China to be wholly foreign-owned, after Beijing relaxed its restrictions on foreign ownership in the new energy vehicles industry.

He also expressed hope that Tesla would take part in China’s opening up and promote stable Sino-US relations.

> A man was killed and two other people injured after a coconut tree in Cenang beach, Pulau Langkawi, fell on them, Oriental Daily reported.

The incident happened on Wednesday at a resort when the three tourists were relaxing by the beach, which was crowded with tourists then.

The coconut tree was said to have been uprooted by strong winds. Langkawi OCPD Supt Mohd Iqbal Ibrahim said one of the victims died at the scene while the other two were sent to Langkawi Hospital.

> Popular messaging app in China, WeChat, grew further last year, notching up 1.08 billion users, Sin Chew Daily also reported.

According to the 2018 WeChat Data Report, the platform registered 45 billion messages daily, an increase of 18% year-on-year.

There were 410 million audio and video calls made every day in 2018, a 100% spike year-on-year.

For active accounts, WeChat surpassed the one billion mark during the last Lunar New Year in February.