Chinese consumers look at a Tesla car in a showroom in Beijing, May 10, 2020.
The controversy over Tesla’s “failing brakes” is rapidly festering after a woman in China stood on top of her car to “defend her rights. Although Tesla has lowered its posture and issued a statement promising to try to meet the woman’s demands, the “hounding” from the official media has not stopped. A party media article demanded that the authorities order Tesla to “immediately suspend production and sales” before the cause of the accident is identified, sparking public concern.
The Economic Daily, which is sponsored by the State Council of the Communist Party of China, published a commentary on April 23 this year, focusing on the seriousness of Tesla’s “brake failure” problem and criticizing Tesla executives for their “condescending” attitude in the face of Chinese consumers’ demands for protection of their rights. The article also criticized Tesla executives for their “condescending” attitude in the face of Chinese consumers’ claims, and asked regulators in high profile to “stop Tesla without delay”. The article did not immediately attract more attention from the public opinion community, but two days later (25th) it was suddenly reprinted by several Chinese mainland media, and Tesla may be “suspended from sales” became the main opinion guide of these media, causing outside suspicions and interpretations.
It is understood that the commentary of the Economic Daily introduced the topic with the incident of a female car owner in Anyang, Henan province, standing on the roof of a Tesla exhibit at the Shanghai International Auto Show on the 19th of this month to “defend her rights”, and then cited two other internet videos of suspected “Tesla malfunction” as evidence. The article then cites two other videos of suspected “Tesla failures” as evidence, questioning whether “brake failure” may be a “common problem for Tesla vehicles”.
While acknowledging that further testing by a third-party authoritative testing agency is needed to prove whether Tesla’s brakes are not working, the article claims that a random inspection of vehicles not yet sold “cannot objectively reflect the quality problem”, citing an engineer’s claim that “Tesla’s brakes are not working”. The engineer claimed that “many of Tesla’s new technologies can only be tested by itself, and many domestic testing institutions simply do not have the ability and equipment to do so”, thus asserting that “this advantage makes Tesla a ‘player and referee This advantage makes Tesla a ‘player and referee’ and puts consumers’ rights in a nearly insoluble situation”.
The article then goes on to criticize Tesla’s “condescension” and “American arrogance” in the face of the rights of its customers, calling out Tesla for its “naked bullying of Chinese consumers. “. Finally, the article calls on the relevant authorities to “take special measures” and order Tesla to immediately suspend production and sales in order to eliminate public fears, citing the “huge potential social harm” of the brake failure accident.
As a party newspaper directly under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Economic Daily has launched such a high-profile public opinion hunt against Tesla, which has aroused speculation from overseas public opinion.
Some political observers have pointed out that the official media of the Communist Party of China has suddenly made a high-profile article on a controversial “rights defense” case, which has the potential to launch a public opinion siege on Tesla with all the power of the country. Second, to suppress Tesla’s image as a winner in the minds of Chinese consumers, compress its market share in China and open the way for similar products produced by Chinese companies such as Huawei to squeeze the market.
Observers also point out that Tesla has previously publicly announced that it will store the company’s collected car user data in China in order to comply with the Chinese Communist Party’s official regulatory requirements, but even so it is useless to give in to the Chinese Communist Party, which will sooner or later replace it with its own products, and Huawei is now launching its own electric car, priced in the same range as Tesla, which is Tesla’s direct competitor.
However, there are also overseas opinions that if Tesla is really forced by the CCP to hand over its key technology now, or even outright driven out of the Chinese market, it will certainly chill and upset more foreign companies in China, thus speeding up the pace of withdrawal from the country, which should be something Beijing authorities are not willing to see yet.
It is worth noting that the aforementioned commentary article in the Economic Daily has been quietly withdrawn, but there are still some articles reprinted in mainland Chinese media that have not yet been removed.
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