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It's not just Elon Musk: China's tech bosses have a thing for dancing
From Jack Ma to Pony Ma, the heads of Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and Xiaomi have all been happy to bust a move at public events
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How China's tech bosses dance
How China's tech bosses dance
This article originally appeared on ABACUS
How weird can it be to watch a tech executive dance in public? Weird enough for the person himself to label it “NSFW” (not safe for work).
That’s what Tesla CEO Elon Musk did when he shared a video on Twitter of him busting out some awkward moves during the launch of the Model Y electric vehicle in Shanghai on Tuesday.
During the dance, Musk stripped off his jacket on stage to show off a T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of his Tesla Gigafactory in China. The performance was soon trending on Weibo under the hashtag “Elon Musk’s weird dance.”
But Musk is hardly the only big tech boss who’s tried to woo China with his dancing. In fact, some of the country’s biggest tech founders have been displaying their dancing skills for years, with varying degrees of success.
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Before Musk, another foreign tech boss took to the stage and managed to impress the audience by dancing disco and singing in Chinese. Xiaomi’s former global vice president Hugo Barra showed up at a launch event in Taiwan in full 1970s garb, performing a hit from Taipei pop star Wu Bai for fans of the smartphone brand.
How Xiaomi forged a unique path
Xiaomi poached Barra from Google in 2013, but he left the Chinese company in 2017 to head Facebook’s VR division. To the best of our knowledge, he hasn’t worn his dance shoes at a public Facebook event… yet.
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