Multi-entrepreneur Elon Musk, who does good or great things for 56 percent of the time and questionable or not-good things the other 44 percent, was just in China to court officials there, an activity that falls into the not-good category.
On Twitter, the social media platform which he now owns and which is blocked in China, Musk said that he was “honored to meet with Premier Li Qiang,” whom he has known for many years.
Li Qiang is a former Chinese Communist Party boss of Shanghai who was elevated to the post of premier in March 2023. According to Financial Times, the Li-implemented lockdown of Shanghai was “one of the most intensive—and badly managed” in the history of the COVID-19 pandemic. However lousy the lockdown may have been for residents, it reportedly earned Xi’s praise for demonstrating “Li’s exemplary character as a true communist who can make difficult decisions and take on heavy responsibilities at critical moments for the party.”
Li is said to be more hospitable to business and economy than Xi. But in addition to being responsible for the Shanghai shambles, he is also the number two man in the Party hierarchy, a position that one does not attain without being the type of person who can attain it. It doesn’t matter whether he offers minors objections to any of Xi’s more destructive edicts. Li will do as Xi wants or get the boot.
Musk was in the country to finalize a deal with a web search company, Baidu, which “will provide mapping and navigation functions to help Tesla operate its driver assistance technology, which it calls ‘full self-driving,’ or FSD….” (“ ‘Watershed moment’ for Tesla as Elon Musk’s visit to China reaps quick reward,” The Guardian, April 29, 2024).
Musk has a tangled relationship with China because of his various business interests. X is blocked by China’s government—which has rigid censorship. China’s government has also complained to the UN about close encounters between its space station and satellites launched by SpaceX, Musk’s rocket company.
However, Tesla runs a factory in Shanghai, and its Model Y was the third bestselling electric or plug-in hybrid car in China in March 2024, according to Clean Technica. BYD, a Chinese manufacturer that vies with Tesla to be the world’s biggest seller of electric cars, boasts the two top-selling models.
Elon Musk seems eager to accept whatever moral compromises are required to enable him to work with the Chinese dictatorship. These have included letting his electric car company sign a pact committing itself to “core socialist values,” a pact that Musk cannot possibly agree with. (Unless you count statements like his assertion in 2018 that “I am actually a socialist. Just not the kind that shifts resources from most productive to least productive, pretending to do good, while actually causing harm.” Which is like saying that one advocates ingesting only good poison, not the kind that poisons people.)
The July 2023 agreement was motivated in part by the Chinese state’s objection to “reckless” price-cutting, i.e., market processes. Today, though, Tesla and other electric vehicle makers operating in China are still cutting prices as they see fit.
