Elon Musk Praises Chinese Workers Locked in Factories, Disses Americans as 'Trying to Avoid Going to Work at All'

Speaking at a recent conference, Tesla CEO Elon Musk once again spoke glowingly of Communist China and its workers, calling Americans lazy in comparison. According to Musk, America’s manufacturing sector employees are “trying to avoid going to work at all.”

Futurism reports that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently praised China again while speaking at the Financial Times‘ Future of the Car summit this week. Musk stated that he believes that the Chinese workforce is significantly harder working than Americans.

Elon Musk – CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company, and Chinese president/emperor Xi Jinping. (Peter Sparks/AFP/Getty, Lintao Zhang/Getty Images for IAAF)

Musk stated: “I think there will be some very strong companies coming out of China. There [are] just a lot of supertalented hardworking people in China who strongly believe in manufacturing.”

He added: “They won’t just be burning the midnight oil, they will be burning the 3:00 a.m. oil, they won’t even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all.” Perhaps Musk is referring to the fact that the workers in his Chinese factory aren’t even allowed to go home.

In April, Musk praised and thanked the Chinese Communist government for allowing his Tesla facility in the country under a “closed-loop system,” in which employees live on the factory premises and sleep on the factory floor. The company reportedly supplied sleeping bags and a mattress to employees and instructed them to set up camp on a free area of factory floor space.

“All employees will have to take a nucleic acid test daily for the first three days, have their temperature checked twice a day and wash their hands four times a day, twice in the morning and twice again in the afternoon,” Bloomberg reported at the time.

Musk is known for pushing his workers to meet his high demands, a former Tesla manager who claimed to work directly with Musk told Business Insider in 2020: “The worst part is the toxicity that Elon creates — unrealistic stretch targets without a realistic plan in order to achieve them. It’s a culture in which, if you don’t have a solution to a problem and you don’t have that problem resolved within a few days or a week or two, you’re gone.”

Previous stories also surfaced in the past of Musk walking through Tesla facilities and firing employees over minor issues. Other employees were forbidden from calling 911 over significant injuries.

The toxic workplace culture is a hallmark of Musk’s companies including infamous brainchip company Neuralink. On the other hand, Tesla employees seeking abortions can be reimbursed for travel costs associated with ending the life of a baby.