Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and most recently the owner of X/Twitter, has recently come under scrutiny for his willingness to accommodate China’s policies to safeguard Tesla’s business interests based on revelations contained in the recently published biography written by Walter Isaacson.
Mediaite reports that Walter Isaacson’s recent biography of Elon Musk reveals that in a conversation with journalist Bari Weiss, Elon Musk admitted that Twitter — now rebranded as X — would exercise caution in its language concerning China to protect Tesla’s business operations in the country.
Elon Musk – CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company, and Chinese president/emperor Xi Jinping.
Isaacson wrote:
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.
Musk’s comments didn’t stop at Twitter’s language policy. When Weiss inquired about China’s genocide of the Uyghurs, which Breitbart News reports extensively on, Musk responded that the issue had “two sides.” This adds another layer of complexity to the ethical questions surrounding Musk’s business relationships in China and their potential influence on his public stances.
Earlier this year, Tesla took a significant step by signing onto a letter pledging commitment to China’s “core socialist values,” making it the only company not based in China to do so. This move was met with both praise and criticism. Chinese authorities lauded Musk for his pro-China call for the reunification of Taiwan, a highly sensitive geopolitical issue. On the other hand, critics argue that such actions indicate a willingness to overlook human rights concerns for the sake of business gains.
Chinese authorities have praised the billionaire for advocating the reunification of Taiwan with China, the U.S.’s geopolitical competitor. Last fall, the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. tweeted: “I would like to thank @elonmusk for his call for peace across the Taiwan Strait and his idea about establishing a special administrative zone for Taiwan. Actually, Peaceful reunification and One Country, Two Systems are our basic principles for resolving the Taiwan question…”
Breitbart News has reported extensively on Musk’s close ties to China. Earlier this year, he claimed that Chinese workers and companies “work the hardest, and they work the smartest.”
When asked about the competition Tesla faces during the release of the company’s financial results on Wednesday, Musk said that he respected car companies in China and referred to the country as the most competitive market in the world. Although he avoided mentioning any specific Chinese automakers, he said, “they work the hardest, and they work the smartest.”
Due to increased competition and waning demand in China, Tesla has been lowering prices in the country. Price reductions in the US and other markets have followed. However, the company’s financial results demonstrated that recent significant price reductions were boosting demand and that the company is reducing costs to continue growing despite what Musk anticipates will be a recession this year.
Read more at Mediaite here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan