cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/29306280
[“U.S. shadow president”] Elon Musk has huge and extensive connections to the Chinese dictatorship, both personally and through his businesses, and he has a long history of bending over backwards to appease its desires.
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Musk’s ties to China largely revolve around Tesla. The company’s largest factory is in Shanghai, where it produces half—over 900,000—of its vehicles sold worldwide. One source estimated that nearly 40 percent of Tesla’s battery supply chain relied on Chinese companies, and those relationships are growing. In 2022, Tesla opened a showroom in Xinjiang, where China is conducting a cultural genocide against its Uyghur minority.
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Tesla has also received large government subsidies, both tacit and explicit, from the Chinese state. It was the first and so far only foreign car company allowed to operate by itself in the Chinese market, as opposed to others like Volkswagen that had to form a joint venture with a Chinese company. Tesla has also secured more than half a billion dollars in loans from state-owned banks there, as well as a 10 percentage point break on its corporate tax rate that lasted until 2023.
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It’s not a coincidence that China is also Tesla’s largest market, and indeed has become more important to the company of late. While sales fell in Europe and the U.S. last year, and appear to be falling faster since Trump was elected (which is surely driven in large part by Musk’s Nazi antics), Tesla sold 657,000 cars in China in 2024—an increase of about 9 percent.
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Musk was also seemingly responsible for removing a number of controls on investment in China in the most recent [U.S.] government funding bill. Back in December, he personally blew it up out of nowhere with dozens of frantic posts on Twitter/X, and when a new version came through, wouldn’t you know it, the controls were gone.
It similarly comes as no surprise that Musk has repeatedly praised China, and even offered support for its foreign-policy objectives. He has personally met with top Chinese officials and businessmen on many occasions over the years, including Chinese Premier Li Qiang, who personally gave Musk a Chinese green card at Tesla’s Shanghai factory, and President Xi Jinping. In 2022, Musk said Taiwan should be deemed a Hong Kong–style “special administrative zone” of China, for which he was thanked by the Chinese ambassador. In 2023, he said on CNBC there is a “certain inevitability” about China’s goal of annexing Taiwan, and later that year said on a podcast that the island is an “integral part” of China. In 2024, Vladimir Putin reportedly asked Musk to not activate Starlink internet over Taiwan as a favor to China, and later SpaceX told its Taiwanese suppliers to leave the island.
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It should also be mentioned that Chinese law states that any company operating in China must hand over any data the government wants without question.
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America is getting a painful, bludgeoning lesson in why there are so many federal rules around ethics, foreign associations, and security. The government is supposed to be accountable to the people, not the personal plaything of one ultra-billionaire and whatever dictators might be able to twist his arm.
@[email protected] please fix title to match the post guidelines.
Yet another blatant attempt at steering anger towards Musk and Trump to China and Russia. The media will focus on this for the next 4 years. Do not fall for it.
Musk’s China playbook reads like a manual on corporate vassalage dressed as “innovation.” Tesla’s Shanghai factories aren’t just assembly lines—they’re leverage points for a regime that knows how to exploit capitalist greed. When half your cars and 40% of your batteries hinge on a dictatorship’s goodwill, principles become optional extras.
The real hack isn’t Chinese spies—it’s letting a man-child with a savior complex rewrite the operating system of a superpower. Gutting climate policies, kneecapping EV competitors, erasing investment controls: all while Tesla’s survival depends on Xinjiang’s forced labor and Beijing’s subsidies. But sure, Taiwan’s the existential threat here.
This isn’t corruption; it’s regulatory theater. The oligarchs aren’t lurking in shadows—they’re hosting SNL and cosplaying as statesmen. Democracy dies to the sound of VC applause and the clink of champagne glasses in Shanghai boardrooms.
THE CHINESE DICTATORSHIP SAY IT WITH ME NOW
Trump and Musk are pillaging the federal government and destroying the country? Here’s how it’s actually China’s fault
I feel like we’re watching some sort of brawl between different factions of liberal and conservative rags trying to decide which foreign adversary is going to be our boogeyman this cycle
Democrats are never above creating conspiracy theories as brainless as what the republicans cook up
China doing the sit back and enjoy strategy while musk tries to milei the yanks
Oh yeah because wow you need security right now totally, yeah no, that’s what is the problem here, the security, yeah, not the rising fascist hyper capitalist dictatorship. Nah yeah sure what a threat because for sure they need Intel and not just let the maniac self destruct nah they need Intel from a man child to be able to operate yeah that’s dangerous man shit good luck with that man totally what a problem
It’s truly incredible watching liberals look at the infinite mountains of terrible shit that a genocidal apartheid-emerald-mine-inheriting techbro grifter billionaire has done and deciding that the worst of it is not backing a genocide in Gaza, attempting to coup multiple countries to steal their lithium deposits, or doing a literal Nazi salute on live television, but rather than he has business ties to China and that somehow those dastardly inscrutable orientals are somehow the true bad guys here.
Then again, if I had spent my entire time on this planet being convinced that voting for whichever ghoul is wearing a blue tie this election cycle would end fascism forever I’d probably lack the introspection to realize I can literally just look up how the Chinese government is structured rather than scream on the internet how Xi Jinping personally ate all my ice cream with Stalin’s comically large spoon.
This is as fucking ridiculous as the maga hogs thinking Radio Free CIA is a communist plot to brainwash the world.
You’re hearing right folks, every single company with investments in China is a national security threat and collaborator of the seeseepe. Steve Jobs? Communist sympathizer, Tim Cook? Literally a CPC card carrying member, Colonel Sanders? Might aswell call him Chairman Sanders. elon Musk? Literally has a wechat group with Xi Jingping and the chinese premier.
I sincerely hope America has massive security breaches that cause CIA assets in China to get arrested or worse. I hope China secures dominance in the intelligence sector. I hope Musk is such a bozo that he personally leaks a list of every single CIA dog and DoD jackal right to Xi Jinping’s personal email.
任何人任何势力都不能阻挡中国人民实现更加美好生活的前进步伐
中国共产党万岁！
I’m not much of a leftist so I don’t usually support turning companies into government held entities…
But given the extent of Musk’s issues, SpaceX needs to be a company wholly owned and operated by NASA. X Boeing Company, Neurolink, Tesla can either undergo the same fate or just be forced to shut down. Musk needs to be removed from any board memberships and barred from future memberships. Musk needs to be under watch and on the no fly list while he is investigated and tried.
This nutjob is a straight up national and global security threat.
