Lei Jun leaned in for a selfie with Elon Musk at a state dinner in China’s Great Hall of the People on Thursday, and the image quickly rippled across Chinese social media. A video circulating online showed the Xiaomi chief approaching Musk and kneeling down for the photo, while Musk made what appeared to be annoyed expressions for the camera.
The moment put two of the world’s best-known business figures in the same frame at a time when Musk is traveling in China as one of several American billionaires accompanying President Donald Trump on a state visit. By Thursday morning, Lei Jun and Elon Musk Posing for a Photo was among the top three trending terms on Weibo, underscoring how closely Chinese users were watching the encounter.
The numbers behind the photo are stark. We estimate Lei’s net worth at $25.4 billion as of Thursday morning, making him the 102nd wealthiest person in the world. Musk’s estimated fortune was $828.5 billion, keeping him the wealthiest person in the world. The contrast helped give the selfie a kind of celebrity economics that was hard to ignore, even in a room full of political ceremony.
Lei has long expressed admiration for Musk. The reported in 2017 that he was one of the first Tesla owners in China, a detail that has followed him as Xiaomi moved into the electric vehicle market with an initial investment in 2021. That push has made Xiaomi one of the Chinese EV brands competing with Tesla’s Model Y for the best selling model in the country, turning a once one-sided relationship into direct commercial overlap.
Musk, for his part, has been using the trip to talk back to Chinese-speaking followers on X, the platform he bought in 2022 for $44 billion. He has posted photos and videos from the visit and replied in Chinese, saying, “My son is learning Mandarin.” The exchange fits a broader pattern: Musk can still draw attention in China, even as his business interests there increasingly collide with local rivals and political theater.
Lei’s selfie was a light moment inside a carefully staged dinner, but it also captured the changing balance between the two men. Musk remains the richer and more globally recognizable figure. Lei now leads a company that is no longer just watching Tesla from afar. The photo showed how close that relationship has become, and how public the competition now is.
