China Praises ‘Pragmatism and Rationality’ of Elon Musk, Calls China Critics ‘Diseased’

China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday published the latest in a string of editorials defending Tesla Inc. owner and Twitter buyer Elon Musk and lambasting his critics, especially Amazon/Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and anyone who echoed his speculation that Communist China might use its economic leverage over Musk to control Twitter content.

The Global Times was positively obsessed with Bezos’ criticism and eager to demonstrate that China has a solid business relationship with Musk, but not too solid, and thinks of him as a relatively sensible Westerner on the rare occasions it thinks of him at all:

Many American media outlets didn’t forget to “remind” people of the fact that Musk once “praised” China, and he encouraged people to visit China and see for themselves. At a critical moment when China and the US were locked in trade frictions in 2019, Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory kicked into production. In merely over a year, Shanghai-made Teslas have accounted for more than half of Tesla’s global delivery. Musk has dealt a lot with China and spoke out some truths about China’s economy, they are regarded as “original sins” of Musk by some Americans. Many link Musk’s Twitter deal with China and raise it to the level of “risks” or “threats,” which shows how narrow the room for pragmatism and rationality toward China in the US has become. Similar incidents have become common in the US. Making an issue of China in every possible way has already become an “American disease.” In the face of China’s growing comprehensive national power that is closing the gap with the US’, the confidence of many political elites in Washington has been declining. And these people are showing anxiety and over-sensitivity toward China, not letting go of any opportunity to hype the “China threat” theory. After Musk acquired Twitter, some from American media even urged Musk to cut off his business ties with China to “guarantee freedom of speech.” Such extreme overbearingness hilariously overlaps their weakness.

Presented as written, because one does not usually see such long, breathless paragraphs outside of suicide bomber manifestos and the instruction manuals for off-brand audiovisual equipment.

Musk has gone out of his way to maintain a good relationship with Communist China. He has lavished praise on the Chinese people as “smart” and “hard-working,” while dismissing Americans as “entitled” and “complacent.” Last year he said Chinese Communist officials are more “concerned” and “responsible” for the happiness of their people, and more “sensitive to public opinion,” than American politicians are.

At a time of growing worldwide condemnation for China’s genocidal abuse of the Uyghur Muslims, Musk opened a Tesla showroom in the Uyghur province of Xinjiang with great fanfare – and China took full political advantage of it. 

Having exhausted China’s strategic reserve of scare quotes to emphasize that it thinks Musk is cool but not that cool, the Global Times compared him favorably to Bezos and another billionaire, George Soros.

The Global Times needled Bezos as a hypocritical war profiteer who only pretends to be patriotic when he wants to close a deal with the Pentagon, and Soros as a crybaby who blamed China for the failure of his “wrong investment decisions.” 

This was a reference to Soros criticizing dictator Xi Jinping and his officials for mismanaging China’s financial markets, exercising ham-fisted control over big Chinese tech companies, and badly underestimating the demographic crisis caused by the now-defunct “One Child Policy.” 

The Global Times responded by dismissing Soros as a “noisy and partisan critic of China’s recent market regulation” who has a “limited understanding of China’s economy,” as demonstrated by the poor “financial decision-making” behind his recently liquidated Chinese stock holdings.

“His latest criticism against China looks more like a venting of his frustration about heavy investment losses,” the Global Times sneered in September 2021, establishing the narrative it quoted again on Wednesday.

The Global Times cited Bezos’ dark musings about China controlling Elon Musk as proof America is overrun by rampant “Sinophobia,” similar to American neurosis about the growing economic power of Japan in the 1980s.

“But the end of the story will be different because there is no way that Washington can overwhelm China in the same way that it coerced Japan to sign a Plaza Accord. Chinese people do not believe in fallacies, nor are we afraid of evil forces. We will never yield to threats or coercion,” the Global Times huffed.

The Plaza Accord was a 1985 agreement between the G5 nations that was supposed to reduce the U.S. trade deficit by devaluing the dollar. Critics of the accord blame it for triggering a period of low growth in Japan known as the “Lost Decade.”

“The U.S. is trying to oppose China in every possible aspect, reflecting the peremptory squeezing of reality by the U.S.’ anti-China ideology. But the reality is also resisting the ideological pressure at all times. The twist has distorted some U.S. elites’ mindset, making them fall into hesitation and division,” the Global Times concluded, reading a great deal of nefarious geopolitical significance into two American billionaires needling each other on social media.