Pop Mart founder and CEO Wang Ning recently led a core management team to visit Apple's headquarters in the US, where they met with Apple CEO Tim Cook and John Ternus, Apple's senior vice president of Hardware Engineering and incoming CEO, according to a statement from Pop Mart.

According to the statement Pop Mart sent to the Global Times on Thursday, the meeting focused on creative design, digital ecosystems and global consumer trends, and was viewed as an exchange between a Chinese consumer brand and a global technology giant on the underlying logic of reaching and engaging users.

Notably, Cook on Thursday also shared a photo on his personal Weibo account featuring himself with Wang and Ternus, as he welcomed the Pop Mart team to Apple Park.

Pop Mart told the Global Times that Wang also presented Cook and other Apple executives with THE MONSTERS' vinyl plush figures from its collaboration with FIFA as gifts.

This was not the first interaction between Pop Mart and Apple. Last year, Cook visited the first stop of THE MONSTERS' 10th anniversary exhibition in Shanghai, which was also his first destination during that trip to China. At the exhibition, artist Kasing Lung and Wang accompanied Cook as they viewed original LABUBU sketches and a wide range of exhibition content. Lung also demonstrated how he created LABUBU designs on an iPad Pro.

From Shanghai to Silicon Valley, and from "hosts" to "visitors," the roles of Pop Mart and Apple have reversed over the past year. The reciprocal visits also send a broader signal: as Chinese collectible toy IPs enter the heart of Silicon Valley and Apple continues to show interest in Chinese creative arts, the exchanges have become a vivid example of the globalization journey of Chinese consumer brands, Liu Dingding, an internet observer based in Beijing, told the Global Times.

Liu told the Global Times that Apple is a trendsetter in the global technology industry, while Pop Mart has become a trendsetter in the global IP-driven creative and cultural sector. As leading players in their respective fields, the two companies' repeated interactions can be viewed as an example of deepening cultural exchange, mutual learning, and cooperation.

Amid news of the meeting, Pop Mart shares rose during afternoon trading on Thursday. The company's Hong Kong-listed shares closed 6.87 percent higher, with its latest market capitalization reaching HK$223.9 billion.