SHANGHAI — If Donald Trump is elected on Tuesday, former Pres He said he might advise By tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has campaigned aggressively for himself in recent weeks and donated more than $100 million to his campaign.
This, perhaps more than the presidential race itself, is being closely watched here in China, where the world’s richest man has extensive business interests and a close relationship with Chinese officials.
It may be confusing to observers: Why does Musk support Trump, who has adopted the principle of “decoupling” between the world’s two largest economies and pledged to impose greater tariffs on Chinese imports, which sparked a trade war in his first term?
Jia Qingguo, former dean of Peking University’s School of International Studies, said Musk has a lot to lose from the separation, as well as any increase in tensions between the United States and China.
“I don’t understand why he supported Trump to this extent because what Trump stood for was against his business, at least his business with China,” Jia, who is also a political adviser to the Chinese government, told NBC News in an interview. .
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. It is recently He told the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal That Chinese President Xi Jinping respects him but also knows that he is “crazy” and will not provoke him.
By associating too closely with Trump, Musk risks angering Chinese officials who may see him as aligned with Trump’s policies and political style that is seen here as “unpredictable.” Trump suggested All-inclusive fees of 60% or higher on all goods imported from China, which will not be welcome in Beijing as officials try to revive the faltering economy.
But Chinese officials may also see the potential for Musk to have a moderating influence on issues like tariffs. After earlier this year he said so Chinese Electric vehicle Companies It would “largely demolish” Most of their competitors without trade barriers, Musk has changed course and He said in May He opposes President Joe Biden’s recently announced tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
“There’s a very interesting dynamic between Musk and China in that he needs it, and he’s trying to pursue his business interests there, but it’s also increasingly, in the long run, potentially undermining his business interests,” Kelly Greco said. , a senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank.
Like other American business leaders, Musk met with senior Chinese officials as Beijing courted international companies. During a A surprise visit He visited the Chinese capital in April, where he met with Premier Li Qiang, China’s No. 2 official.
In a separate meeting in Beijing last year with Chen Gang, China’s foreign minister at the time, Musk expressed his opposition to “decoupling.”
By publicly criticizing the idea at a time when many others are vocally calling for it, Musk is playing an “important role” as “a kind of bridge between the two countries,” Greco said.
If Chinese officials greet Musk almost like a world leader, the Chinese people treat him like a rock star.
“He is a legend,” said Jennifer Lian, 39, a Tesla owner in Beijing.
Commentators on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, where Musk has 2.2 million followers, have suggested he could be the next Henry Kissinger, the late American statesman and longtime US-China mediator who was highly respected in China and had close ties to the ruling Communist Party. .
Ian Bremmer, founder and president of New York-based Eurasia Consulting Group, said Chinese leaders took notice when Trump, after Musk’s visit to Beijing in April, started talking about the possibility of Chinese electric vehicle companies manufacturing cars in the United States.
“Elon’s decision to join forces with Trump has fundamentally hampered his future in China over whether or not he is capable of achieving political accomplishments,” he wrote in a recent newsletter. “This is important and it is not entirely clear whether he has realized this yet.”
‘“Bite the hand that feeds you”
By Musk’s own account, most of his business interests lie outside China. SpaceX and its Starlink satellite communications system have no business in the country, while its X social media platform, like other major Western social media outlets, is banned here.
It’s a different story for Tesla, which relies on China as the world’s largest car market and the company’s largest market outside the United States.
The company said this in October It sold 181,883 cars in China In the third quarter, up 30% compared to the same period a year earlier and representing nearly 40% of global deliveries.
Tesla’s “Gigafactory” in Shanghai is the company’s largest factory outside the United States and arguably the most important asset in Musk’s electric vehicle empire. At full capacity, it produces nearly a million cars a year and a significant portion of the profits that have helped make Tesla one of the most valuable car companies in the world.
The factory itself is a huge complex of buildings and loading docks that stretch across grounds bordered by canals that create a kind of moat around it.
The back side of the factory is connected to the nearby highway by a bridge where a steady stream of car carriers loaded with new Tesla cars come and go to be sold in the Chinese market and exported to other countries, but not to the United States. .
Quan Bin, 34, joined Tesla a few months ago to oversee the maintenance of the company’s fire safety equipment. In an interview across the street from the factory after his shift, Kwan praised his employer.
“Elon Musk is a great businessman,” he said. “It leads the technology business, and Tesla contributes greatly to the local economy and the Chinese economy.”
A short distance from the Gigafactory, construction is well underway on a new Tesla factory that will soon manufacture Megapacks — very large batteries used to store massive amounts of electricity. Each unit can store enough energy to power 3,600 homes for an hour, according to the company. They were designed with utilities and power plants in mind.
Tesla only began work on the new project in May, weeks after Musk’s surprise visit to Beijing and as tensions rose between the United States and China. When officials in Shanghai made the announcement, they said it took the two sides just one month to negotiate the deal.
In response to NBC News’ request for an interview, Tesla declined to comment “at this time.”
Tesla has a special status in China since it became the first foreign automaker to be allowed to own an entire Chinese factory, rather than being required to form a joint venture with a local company. After construction began on that factory in 2019, Musk told then-Premier Li Keqiang that he wanted to visit China more often, and Li replied that maybe he could get a Chinese green card, according to a report on a Chinese government website.
When Musk visited Beijing in April, local Chinese authorities requested this Lifting restrictions on Tesla cars Having passed the country’s data security requirements regarding ‘connected vehicles’.
In June, when Tesla’s Model Y was first included on the list of electric cars that could be purchased by the Jiangsu provincial government, a Jiangsu official told Chinese media that although special approval was required for imported goods, “Tesla is not considered an import.”
Musk also said he expects Tesla to get that Chinese regulatory approval by the end of the year to begin offering a “Full Self Driving” driver assistance program in the country, news that has increased the value of Tesla shares and Musk’s net worth.
Greco said the company is “making some big bets on the ability to develop its autonomous vehicles in China.”
But Musk faces stiff competition from Chinese electric car makers such as BYD, which… It posted higher quarterly revenue than Tesla For the first time last week.
In addition to electric cars, China is also looking to develop its ability to compete with companies such as SpaceX and Starlink.
Chinese officials have not been shy about linking what Musk says to where he makes his money. Last year, A Editorial The state-backed nationalist newspaper Global Times warned Musk not to “bite the hand that feeds you” after he appeared to agree with a post on X speculating that Covid-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory.
Greco said she thought it was “very interesting” that despite Musk being a champion of free speech, when “China was pressuring him, or responding to these comments, he didn’t reaffirm his belief in free speech. He just didn’t respond.”
Musk’s business relations with China have led to other critical situations. Tesla came under criticism in 2022 when it opened a showroom in China’s western Xinjiang region, where human rights groups allege widespread abuses against Muslim-majority minorities, something Beijing denies.
Musk also made comments that angered Taiwan, considered one of the most sensitive issues between the US and China, as they were seen as reflecting the views of President Xi. In 2022, it is He told the Financial Times Conflict over the island claimed by Beijing is inevitable, and that perhaps it can be avoided by giving China some control over a “special administrative region” in Taiwan similar to its arrangement with the Chinese province of Hong Kong.
The comment earned praise from Chen, China’s foreign minister at the time, and a rebuke from Hsiao Pei-chim, who was then Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to Washington and is now the island’s vice president.
Musk also said that Beijing expressed its disapproval of the launch of Starlink in Ukraine to help the military cope with Russian-imposed internet outages, and sought his assurances that he would not sell Starlink in China.
Starlink’s satellite internet service would be crucial to Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack, but concerns about Musk’s ties with Beijing prompted the island’s main telecommunications company, Chunghwa, to sign a deal last year with a British-European company instead.
The topic of Taiwan did not come up during the conversation Trump and Musk had on X in August. But Trump made comments during the election campaign in which he called on Al Jazeera to pay Washington more for its defense and accused it of “stealing” the chip trade from the United States.
Greco said the Musk-Trump alliance may be based less on politics than on a mutual agreement “about the value of pursuing business interests.”
She said that with Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, taking similarly hard-line stances on China, the question for Musk may be which candidate can influence him more strongly.
“I think he should see it through, because Donald Trump is the most likely party he can make a deal with,” Greco said.
Janice McKee Fryer reported from Shanghai and Jennifer Jett reported from Hong Kong.
