Tesla Praises Chinese Communist Government While Seeking More Market Share

China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday quoted Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla heaping praise on the Chinese Communist government, evidently hoping the commissars will respond to extravagant flattery by granting the company more access to Chinese markets.

The Global Times was not sure if the charm campaign is working, but gave Tesla a pat on the head for endorsing the latest five-year plan and promising to play along:

US electric carmaker Tesla is seeking to further expand its presence in the Chinese market, saying that it will create more value in China “a land full of vigor and vitality,” an executive said on Tuesday, noting various development goals outlined in the report to the ongoing 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

In a statement sent to the Global Times on Tuesday, Tao Lin, vice president of Tesla, noted that the report reiterated the basic tone of expanding opening-up, saying that Tesla has been a beneficiary of China’s opening-up drive over the past years.

“Tesla was able to become China’s first wholly foreign-owned auto company only on the premise of the Chinese government’s liberalization of foreign shareholding ratios. We are very proud to become one of the achievements of China’s reform and opening-up policies,” said Tao.

Tao went on to specifically praise the triumphalist “report” on China’s progress delivered to the 20th Communist Party Congress this week by dictator Xi Jinping, presenting Tesla’s Shanghai “Gigafactory” as the sort of foreign investment that will ensure “innovation will remain at the heart of China’s modernization drive.”

As the Global Times duly noted, most of the cars produced by the Shanghai facility have been shipped to overseas markets, but that appears to be changing with China’s granting of a long-delayed tax break to domestic Tesla buyers last week. Industry-watchers noted the statuses on backorders from Chinese customers began advancing as backlogs in North America and Europe were cleared.

“We sincerely believe that Tesla will create more value in China – this land full of vigor and vitality, after it made the achievements of commencing Shanghai plant construction, car production and delivery in the same year,” the company statement sent to the Global Times gushed.

The Global Times reciprocated by predicting a bright future for Tesla in the New Energy Vehicle (NEV) market, China’s term for the electric vehicle industry. 

“China’s NEV market has seen rapid development over recent years and has provided ample opportunities for both domestic and foreign carmakers. In the first three quarters, more than 4 million NEVs were sold in China, up more than 110 percent on a yearly basis and higher than whole-year sales for 2021,” the Global Times boasted.

Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk have a long history of buttering up the Chinese Communist government. The aforementioned tax break for Tesla purchases, which languished in the Chinese bureaucracy for years, was approved after Musk gave a controversial interview in which he endorsed China taking control of Taiwan under “special administrative zone” rules similar to Hong Kong’s. 

The regime in Beijing warmly embraced Musk’s suggestion after seeming briefly irritated he would dare to insert himself into China’s “internal affairs,” while the Taiwanese glanced at the authoritarian nightmare Hong Kong has become and announced their military would no longer purchase Teslas.

Musk wrote a flattering article for a magazine produced by China’s chief censorship agency in August, even as he was proclaiming himself a “free speech absolutist” and pressing his turbulent bid to take over the social media platform Twitter, which is banned in China. He often boasts of his “excellent” relationship with the “very thoughtful” leaders of the Chinese Communist Party.

Musk has praised the Chinese Politburo as “more responsible” and more concerned about the welfare of their people than American leaders. He also pronounced the “smart, hard-working” people of China to be superior to “entitled” and “complacent” Americans.

In January, even as worldwide condemnation of China’s genocidal abuse of the Uyghur Muslims was reaching fever pitch, Tesla announced a splashy opening ceremony for its new 5,300 showroom in the capital of Xinjiang, home of the Uyghurs. Tesla ignored the ensuing outcry from human rights organizations.