China is behind Elon Musk’s persistent falsehoods and lies, in my opinion. When China tells him to jump, the only question he may ask is how high.
According to Google AI:
China is a major market for Tesla, and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has a close relationship with China:
- China’s market for Tesla China is a key market for Tesla, accounting for more than half of the world’s electric vehicle (EV) sales. In 2023, Tesla derived nearly a quarter of its total revenue from China.
Musk’s relationship with China
Musk has been a reliable ally to China, publicly praising the country’s Communist Party and economic success. He has also visited China multiple times, including a trip in April 2024 that was seen as a success by investors.
Musk’s wealth
As of August 2024, Forbes estimates Musk’s net worth to be US\$247 billion. His wealth is closely tied to his 20.5% stake in Tesla.
We should wonder how much information Musk gathers will be given to China.
Elon Musk’s recent one-day visit to Beijing confirmed his status as China’s fair-haired American capitalist. Tesla, the Chinese government said, has become the only foreign-owned company that is fully compliant with their data security laws. Accordingly, it has given Musk the go-ahead to build lots and lots of self-driving cars in the company’s Chinese factories.
Musk’s next move, The Wall Street Journal reports, is to get Chinese government approval to transfer the data that its cars collect, with the help of the Chinese search-engine company Baidu, to the U.S. in order to upgrade its self-driving-car technology here. That may just lead to U.S. security concerns similar to those which led officials to ban companies from using technology from Huawei here in the States.
But then, Musk’s politics seem a lot closer to China’s than they are to America’s. After all, we don’t know if the Tesla/Baidu traffic-monitoring technology won’t also prove to be a boon to China’s “social credit” surveillance, which monitors the pro- and anti-government sentiments of China’s citizenry. Even if it is put to that use, though, it will also likely boost Tesla’s revenues, which could use some boosting these days.