California Gov. Gavin Newsom playing basketball with students from the Beijing Yuying School.
Office of the Governor of California
California Gov. Gavin Newsom plowed into a student while playing basketball in China.”I got you,” Newsom said after he broke the student’s fall.Footage of the accidental takedown has been making the rounds on social media.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s attempts to show off his basketball chops in China didn’t quite go as planned.
On October 23, Newsom embarked on a weeklong trip to China focused on climate action. On Friday, Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, visited the Beijing Yuying School. As part of his official duties, he toured the school’s farm-to-school and agricultural science programs, a representative for Newsom told Insider.
But perhaps more notably, Newsom also played some basketball while he was there, and footage of the game has since been making the rounds on social media. A video shows Newsom dribbling the ball away from one student and plowing right into another. Both Newsom and the student hit the ground, drawing laughter and a big reaction from people offscreen.
“I got you,” Newsom says with a grin after he breaks the student’s fall.
The student could be seen smiling as they both got up from the ground. Newsom’s representative said the student wasn’t hurt.
California Governor Gavin Newsom accidentally topples little kid during pickup game of basketball in Beijing. pic.twitter.com/0m0Q3FFYfE
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) October 29, 2023
During his week overseas, Newsom visited Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai as well as the provinces of Guangdong and Jiangsu. His office said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that the trip was “focused on climate action, economic development and tourism, and working to actively combat xenophobia.”
Newsom met Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday. After their meeting, Newsom told reporters he had encouraged Xi to attend next month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in San Francisco, per Politico.
“Divorce is not an option. We have to define the terms of the future. We have to live together across our differences,” Newsom said of US-China relations during an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
“I don’t want to see this relationship deteriorate. It services no one. We are interdependent,” Newsom told Amanpour.