This weekend, the Wall Street Journal reports that Tesla Motors is trying to press the Obama administration to make foreign auto sales in China a vital topic when Chinese President Xi Jinping visits the US in September. Primarily, Tesla wants China to relax its requirements for foreign auto companies to sell within the country as electric-vehicle competition there continues to rise.

As far back as February 2014, Tesla identified China as an extremely important market for the car company's continued growth. Around that time, the Chinese government announced it would give Model S buyers a larger-than-expected subsidy in an effort to improve air quality in the country. Soon after, CEO Elon Musk told investors and reporters that the Chinese market will be good to Tesla when the company started shipping its cars. “It will be unlikely that we will be able to satisfy demand in China this year," Musk said back in early 2014.

Last year, however, did not pan out as Musk imagined. Tesla reportedly sold only 2,499 Model S units in China for 2014, falling well short of its goal to make one third of the company's global sales in that country, according to investment site Seeking Alpha.

Flash forward to 2015 and while things have improved for Tesla's sales, several additional US electric-car startups—such as Faraday Future Inc. and Atieva Inc. according to WSJ—have also found Chinese financial backing. The paper notes that China typically prohibits foreign car makers from assembling vehicles in the market without a local partner, something Tesla views as an advantage for Chinese automakers while being detrimental to US companies.

"The China-owned companies are not expected to sell controlling stakes to American companies and are free from other trade hurdles that we face,” Tesla spokesman Ricardo Reyes told WSJ. “The requirement that Tesla establish a joint venture for local manufacturing and other obstacles to our activities, such as much higher import duties in China compared to the United States, put American car companies at a significant disadvantage."

In addition to increased US competition and traditional Chinese market barriers to entry, the WSJ notes China-based electric car companies may also be on the rise. Fisker Automotive, a Southern California electric and hybrid car company that previously went bankrupt, was revived when China’s Wanxiang Group Corp. bought the company last year. And Beijing-based Leshi Internet & Technology (LeTV) has hired more than 100 engineers from US auto companies to focus on an electric car. LeTV even unveiled its plans for "an electric sports car called Le Supercar" last month, according to the paper.