Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk introduces Tesla Motors’ products during a press conference in Beijing, Oct. 23, 2015.
The high-profile intervention of the official media in the “rights” controversy of female Tesla owners has led to interpretations of the Chinese Communist Party’s intentions. Yu Maochun, a senior researcher at the U.S. think tank, believes that the Chinese Communist Party is targeting Tesla not only to limit its market share in China and gain access to its advanced car-making technology, but also because the company is a close participant in the U.S. space program.
TESLA is the only foreign company with a wholly owned factory in China. Tesla received a “warm” welcome from the Chinese side when it first came to China to build a factory to build cars. Beijing not only provided Tesla with a large amount of capital, but also promised Tesla a favorable tax rate of 15 percent until 2023, subsidized land for industrial zones, and even Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met personally with Tesla founder Elon Musk. Tesla has quickly opened up the electric car market in China, where the company’s revenue grew 124 percent year-over-year in 2020, with more than 137,000 units sold and sales reaching $6.6 billion. However, just as Tesla was riding high in China’s electric car industry, the situation suddenly reversed.
In March, the Chinese government banned Tesla vehicles from military barracks and family dormitories, citing the safety risks posed by Tesla’s vehicle cameras, and the “rights defense” controversy involving a female Tesla owner in Henan Province dragged Tesla electric cars into the siege of the Chinese Communist Party’s official media.
After the female owner wore a T-shirt with the words “brake failure” on the roof of the Tesla exhibit, several official media outlets suddenly intervened in the incident, severely criticizing Tesla for its “arrogance,” “bullying They criticized Tesla for being “arrogant”, “overbearing” and “bullying”, and asked Tesla to “reflect on the root of the problem”. At the same time, a large number of Chinese Communist Party’s officially trained “water army” immediately cooperated with the official public opinion guide and launched a massive denunciation of Tesla on social media. In the end, Tesla China executives were forced to change their stance of “no compromise on unreasonable demands” and issued a statement saying that they would try to meet the demands of the female owner.
The high-profile intervention of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has aroused great concern from the outside world, and also led to the analysis and interpretation of the CCP’s official intentions by overseas public opinion.
On Friday (30), the Voice of America published an article discussing the intentions of Beijing authorities behind Tesla’s recent “fall from favor” in mainland China.
The article cites Yu Maochun, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a U.S. think tank, as saying that the Chinese Communist Party’s usual approach to foreign investment, especially foreign companies with key technologies and proprietary innovations, is “bait and switch”: initially, foreign companies are lured into China with tax incentives and other measures; once they have achieved initial success in China, the Chinese Communist Party will Once foreign companies have achieved initial success in China, the CCP does not hesitate to use its investments in China as leverage to force foreign companies, either directly or subtly, to comply with a series of official CCP demands.
Yu Maochun believes that the current actions taken by CCP officials against Tesla are consistent with their modus operandi against foreign companies, namely, controlling anti-American xenophobic public opinion and psychologically squeezing U.S. companies to force companies like Tesla to bend to the will of CCP officials. These include “sharing proprietary technology and knowledge, prohibiting the movement of funds out of China, limiting Tesla’s market share in China, and possibly requiring the company to reveal national security secrets in other business with the U.S. government, such as SpaceX,” he said.
He said the Chinese Communist Party is targeting Tesla at this point in time for a variety of reasons, including “Tesla’s phenomenal success in China, its advanced technology and its close involvement in the U.S. space program.
Musk is both the founder of Tesla and the chief executive of manned aerospace manufacturer Space X, according to the Voice of America report. NASA and the Department of Defense are Musk’s most important customers, with SpaceX handling about two-thirds of NASA’s launch missions.
In addition, SpaceX was awarded a major $149 million Pentagon contract last October to supply parts of the military’s missile warning system, indicating that SpaceX also plays an important role in the U.S. national security system.
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