And what would the other side be?
Another example of entrepreneur Elon Musk’s willingness to evade the nature of the Chinese government is reported in a new biography of him by Walter Isaacson. Via Mediaite (Isaac Schorr, September 13, 2023), we learn of the following passage in Chapter 90 of Isaacson’s tome:
At one point during their two-hour conversation, she asked how Tesla’s business interests in China might affect the way he managed Twitter. Musk got annoyed. That was not what the conversation was supposed to be about. Weiss persisted. Musk said that Twitter would indeed have to be careful about the words it used regarding China, because Tesla’s business could be threatened. China’s repression of the Uyghurs, he said, had two sides. Weiss was disturbed. Finally, Bowles [another journalist] stepped in to defuse the issue with a few jokes. They moved on to other topics.
And that’s it. The book does not again refer to “Uyghurs” and offers no hint of what Musk regards as the “other side.” It is true that the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region of China don’t want to be culturally and personally destroyed by the Chinese government, whereas the Chinese government does want to destroy them for the sake of imposing cultural uniformity and, allegedly, combatting terrorism. So that’s two sides.
Whatever his shortcomings, Isaacson is a conscientious reporter. The plausibility of his account is confirmed by Musk’s willingness in July 2023 to let Tesla formally pledge to avoid “abnormal pricing” (i.e., market prices that Chinese regulators dislike) and to “promote core socialist values” so that Tesla can continue to operate in China.
Even if one might be excused for muddled advocacy of socialism in some other context, such advocacy is inexcusable in the context of China, where in practice it is attended by prolific and systematic—and documented—brutality and murder. Of course, we can stipulate that Musk is no actual champion of Chinese socialism, that he lied or let Tesla lie in order to remain in the Chinese market. But what does it mean to not “really” believe in a government’s ideology as enacted but to state for the record that you will promote it and will run your company to conform with it? One thing it means is that in an interview with a U.S. reporter conducted on U.S. soil, you say that what’s happening to the Uyghurs has “two sides.” And you earnestly avoid the subject of Chinese repression. Perhaps you also speak in neutral tones of how China’s policy “has been to sort of reunite Taiwan with China.” (The People’s Republic of China has never governed Taiwan.)
Although the Uyghurs are mentioned only once in Isaacson’s biography, China is mentioned often. For example, in Chapter 76, Musk is quoted as saying that when asked during his visits to China how China can be more innovative, “The answer I give is to challenge authority.”
