Tim Cook will attend the 2021 China Development Forum alongside Elon Musk and others

Tim Cook (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

Apple CEO Tim Cook will attend the 2021 China Development Forum.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk will attend, as will other high-profile CEOs from companies like BMW and HSBC.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will attend the 2021 China Development Forum (CDF), according to a new report.

The forum, run by the Chinese government, will also include other high-profile executives including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and representatives from BMW and HSBC according to the Global Times.

Oliver Zipse, chairman of the board of management of BMW AG, will co-chair this year's CDF, a gathering of executives of 100-plus foreign firms including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, HSBC Chief Executive Noel Quinn, Chuck Robbins, chairman and CEO of Cisco, Ray Dalio, founder and chairman of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates and Jakob Stausholm, CEO of Rio Tinto Group, according to a posting on the CDF's official WeChat account on Monday.

The event has been an annual one since 2000 and will take place at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing the report says. Scheduled for later this month, this year's event will have the largest non-Chinese attendance to date – notable given the ongoing trade tensions involving the Chinese government.

The forum comes at a time where Apple is in the process of reducing its reliance on Chinese factories. Some manufacturing is now taking place in India and other countries as Apple works to avoid the same manufacturing issues it experienced during 2020's pandemic outbreak. Those issues have caused products like AirPods Max to continue to suffer stock replenishment issues months after their release.

Sick of waiting for AirPods Max to come into stock? You can still check out some of the best AirPods Max alternatives available today.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.