If a country’s government is committing genocide and religious persecution, runs a tyrannical censorship regime, demands every major business answer directly to the government, and is openly hostile to your country (the U.S.), would you be worried about doing business there? If you’re Elon Musk, the answer is an emphatic “no.” The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) many and ongoing crimes evidently do not disturb Musk, who is planning to expand his Tesla China branch with a huge new factory.
Tesla opening Megapack factory in Shanghai to supplement output of Megapack factory in California https://t.co/hDpqoyNeOx
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 9, 2023
CCP state media outlet Xinhua News excitedly announced on April 9, Easter, that Tesla would be building a new “mega factory” in China to produce Megapack, the company’s huge energy-storage batteries. I guess labor really is a lot cheaper in China. So much for Musk calling himself a “free speech absolutist” and pontificating that he “love[s]” humanity; it’s profit over principles for the Tesla and Twitter CEO.
Musk’s hypocrisy is not shocking, however. Tesla workers were reportedly being forced to work in very inhumane conditions during China’s insane zero-COVID lockdowns in early 2022, and Musk endorsed the CCP’s unjust claims on Taiwan. In other words, Musk has a record of violating his own stated principles of pro-free speech humanitarianism when it suits him.
Tesla is set to break ground on the new battery plant in 2023’s third quarter, per Xinhua. The plant will then begin production in 2024’s second quarter, according to Tesla representatives at a signing ceremony in Shanghai and Xinhua. All major businesses in China are surveilled by and answerable to the CCP, and the CCP practices “civil-military fusion”–where everything in the economic and tech spheres is accessible to the Chinese military. From Xinhua:
The new factory will initially produce 10,000 Megapack units every year, equal to around 40 GWh of energy storage. The products will be sold worldwide…The landing of the factory is expected to create another industrial cluster worth over 100 billion yuan (14.6 billion U.S. dollars), said Lu Yu, an official with the Lin-gang Special Area Administration…In January 2019, Tesla broke ground on its Shanghai Gigafactory…
As Tesla’s first Gigafactory outside the United States, the plant delivered 710,000 vehicles in 2022, an increase of 48 percent from 2021. It has become Tesla’s primary vehicle export hub, with electric cars selling well in Asia-Pacific, Europe and other regions.
Since 2019, Tesla has been ramping up investment in Lingang.
Again, Musk is ramping up his production in China, despite the CCP’s crimes and the CCP’s blatantly open control over and interference in businesses in China. That’s insane.
Musk also wrote an article last August for China Cyberspace, “a monthly magazine run by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the central agency for internet control and regulation,” according to a translation of the article on Beijing Channel and The Post Millennial. In the article, Musk tried to encourage CCP interest in his microchip, artificial intelligence, and space travel projects.
Recently, survivors of the CCP’s horrific internment camps for Uyghur Muslims testified to Congress about CCP brainwashing, sexual abuse, torture, forced sterilization, and inhumane conditions. The CCP also used genocidal policies against Tibetans and Mongolians. A few months ago, the CCP reportedly committed a “Tiananmen 2.0” massacre against anti-regime protesters. Uyghur Muslims, Chinese Christians, and Falun Gong are among those persecuted by the CCP for their religion.
Finally, the CCP is history’s greatest mass murderer, having killed over 500 million people. That’s the regime that Musk wants to do more business with. It’s disgusting and, in my personal opinion, traitorous. Musk is helping the thoroughly evil CCP reach its goal of superseding the U.S. as the most important world power, whether he realizes it or not. It is time American businessmen started putting principles and patriotism ahead of profit and power.
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