Elon Musk is in China for the first time in 3 years, but people on the Chinese internet only care about a giant panda called Ya Ya

• Elon Musk is visiting China, but a giant panda called Ya Ya is upstaging him on the Chinese internet.
• Videos of Ya Ya, who just returned from the Memphis Zoo, accumulated 230 million views on Tuesday.

Elon Musk might be the king of Twitter, but China's social media only has eyes for Ya Ya the panda.

Musk arrived in Beijing on Tuesday to kick off his first visit to China in three years, meeting with Foreign Minister Qin Gang and the country's industry and commerce ministries.

It's a critical trip for Musk — he wants to expand Tesla's business in the country, even as US-China relations continually sour.

Yet the high-stakes visit barely made a blip on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, apart from some interest in what Musk was served for dinner (Beijing's famed roast duck was notably missing from the menu).

Instead, Ya Ya, the giant panda, dominated the day.

After a month of waiting in quarantine, the 23-year-old panda has finally reunited with her kin at the Beijing Zoo.

She's returned from a 20-year stint at the Memphis Zoo, where she was on loan to the US as part of China's "panda diplomacy."

Pandas are already a symbol of nationalistic pride in China, but Ya Ya has become a lightning rod for Chinese patriotism because of allegations in 2021 that she was mistreated in the US.

The Memphis Zoo has denied the accusations, but as Washington and Beijing continued to butt heads, Weibo users saw the reports of neglect as an affront to their country.

Now that Ya Ya's back in town, footage of her frolicking in the Beijing Zoo, cataloged under the hashtag "Ya Ya joins the group chat," has accrued 230 million views on Weibo, according to data seen by Insider.

Her return was also the top news story on the platform, though to be fair, Weibo is heavily censored and moderated.

Musk's duckless dinner, on the other hand, garnered 51 million views on the same day, while hashtags about his China visit and Tesla's stock gained 2.3 million and 5 million views respectively, per Weibo data.

The billionaire, who owns a Weibo account with 2 million followers, made a post on the platform on Tuesday morning, praising China's space program.

Here's hoping he'll find time to meet "Yilong Ma," his Chinese doppelgänger who tries his best to imitate the CEO in English.