By Brenda Goh&nbsp;and&nbsp;Joe Cash
SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - A veritable parade of overseas&nbsp;CEOs&nbsp;including Tesla's Elon&nbsp;Musk&nbsp;and&nbsp;Goldman Sachs' David Solomon have made their way to a reopened&nbsp;China&nbsp;in the last few months.
One notable common strand: they've not talked much in public about their trips which have mostly consisted of meetings with government officials, local staff&nbsp;and&nbsp;business partners. Media events&nbsp;and&nbsp;other&nbsp;public engagements, once frequent before the pandemic, are now rare.
Even&nbsp;Musk, known for his unreserved banter on Twitter, was uncharacteristically silent on a whirlwind trip last week.
In 2020, the billionaire celebrated the delivery of the first cars made at Tesla's Shanghai plant with a dance on stage that was open to the press. This time around, media were not invited to cover his plant visit.
And&nbsp;while&nbsp;Musk&nbsp;has mentioned the trip in two posts since leaving, he didn't tweet once while in&nbsp;China.
Goldman's Solomon has similarly been more low-key. In 2019, he gave media interviews&nbsp;and&nbsp;participated in several forums. But during his trip in March this year, his only known engagements were closed-door meetings with regulators,&nbsp;China's sovereign wealth fund&nbsp;and&nbsp;at a university.
The lack of information from Western&nbsp;CEOs&nbsp;and&nbsp;their companies about the trips to&nbsp;China&nbsp;can be attributed to wariness given that U.S.-Sino political&nbsp;and&nbsp;trade tensions have worsened to their lowest point in decades, said senior staff at chambers of commerce&nbsp;and&nbsp;trade associations.
President Xi Jinping's increasing focus on national security - in particular a recent crackdown on consultancies&nbsp;and&nbsp;due diligence firms - has also left many&nbsp;foreign&nbsp;companies uncertain where they might step over the line of the law, they said.
Noah Fraser, managing director of the Canada&nbsp;China&nbsp;Business Council, said&nbsp;visiting&nbsp;executives are no longer chasing new business opportunities but are concentrating on maintaining existing relationships&nbsp;and&nbsp;will often stipulate no press, big dinners or speaking opportunities.
They appear to be keeping "their heads down&nbsp;and&nbsp;will have private lunches where they can learn from people on the ground what's happening," he said.
Before travelling to&nbsp;China, U.S.&nbsp;CEOs&nbsp;have been seeking advice about how Beijing's expansion of its counter-espionage law could affect them, according to the head of a U.S. trade association who declined to be identified, citing the sensitive nature of doing business in&nbsp;China&nbsp;currently.
The&nbsp;CEOs&nbsp;also want to know how to deal with Chinese government officials&nbsp;and&nbsp;with questions once the trip becomes public, the association head said, adding it was not in their interest to speak to media&nbsp;and&nbsp;run the risk of being asked to comment on stances taken by Washington&nbsp;and&nbsp;Beijing.
The EU Chamber of Commerce said in a statement that companies operating in&nbsp;China&nbsp;have always exercised a certain level of caution&nbsp;and&nbsp;were now adapting to changes in areas that might be deemed sensitive.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment while Goldman declined to comment.
China's&nbsp;foreign&nbsp;ministry said in a statement that the numerous visits from U.S.&nbsp;CEOs&nbsp;were a "vote of confidence" in the Chinese economy. That their trips were relatively low-key stemmed from what it called the U.S. government's "wrong policy" of containing&nbsp;China, it said.
With respect to concerns about its counter-espionage law, it was&nbsp;China's right to safeguard national security through domestic legislation, it added.
The U.S. Department of Commerce declined to comment.
SHOWING COMMITMENT
While U.S. President Joe Biden said last month he expected a thaw in frosty relations with Beijing "very shortly", there is no denying that tensions have soared this year with flashpoints including U.S. export curbs on semiconductors&nbsp;and&nbsp;data security concerns.
That said, after three years of harsh COVID curbs that hampered entry into&nbsp;China,&nbsp;foreign&nbsp;CEOs&nbsp;appear eager to get the lay of the land.
Those travelling here in recent months have included Apple's Tim Cook, Intel's Patrick Gelsinger, General Motors' Mary Barra, Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman&nbsp;and&nbsp;JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon.
Sixty-seven&nbsp;foreign&nbsp;business leaders attended the high-profile&nbsp;China&nbsp;Development Forum this year, although that is still 20 fewer than in 2019.
"The idea is that you have to show sufficient commitment to the&nbsp;China&nbsp;market if you're playing there," said Christopher Johnson, president of&nbsp;China&nbsp;Strategies Group, a political risk consultancy.
At the same time, the&nbsp;CEOs&nbsp;need to do that "without setting off alarm bells with the U.S. government,&nbsp;and&nbsp;it's a very difficult task," he added.
JPMorgan&nbsp;and&nbsp;Blackstone declined to comment. Apple, General Motors&nbsp;and&nbsp;Intel did not respond to requests for comment.
The few known comments by&nbsp;foreign&nbsp;CEOs&nbsp;whilst they were in&nbsp;China&nbsp;have been in line with Biden's stance that he is not seeking to decouple the world's two largest economies.
The&nbsp;foreign&nbsp;ministry quoted&nbsp;Musk&nbsp;as saying he was opposed to a decoupling of the U.S.&nbsp;and&nbsp;China&nbsp;economies which he described as "conjoined twins".
JPMorgan's Dimon told the JPMorgan Global&nbsp;China&nbsp;Summit last week he favoured East-West "de-risking" rather than decoupling, according to a source from the event.
Daniel Russel, vice president for international security&nbsp;and&nbsp;diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said the difference between de-risking&nbsp;and&nbsp;decoupling was a subtle but important one.
It "makes clear that the issue is managing the risk of dependency on&nbsp;China&nbsp;rather than a determination to separate the world into two competing spheres," he said.
&nbsp;
(Reporting by Brenda Goh in Shanghai&nbsp;and&nbsp;Joe Cash in Beijing; Additional reporting by Selena Li in Hong Kong, Zhang Yan in Shanghai, the Shanghai newsroom, David Brunnstrom&nbsp;and&nbsp;David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

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Analysis-For Musk and other foreign CEOs visiting China, silence is golden