What Elon Musk said about China

The billionaire is now one of the most influential people around President-elect Donald Trump. But his views could be at odds with the next administration’s hawkish China policy.

Donald Trump’s successful re-election has consolidated, at least for now, the role of Elon Musk, in addition to being the world’s richest man, CEO of Tesla, founder of SpaceX and owner of X, formerly Twitter, as one of the most influential figures in the President-elect’s inner circle.

Musk, who had endorsed Trump, campaigned for Trump, and personally donated at least $120 million to his own super PAC supporting Trump, is marching into the very center of the American political theater. Since Trump’s victory, Musk has actively participated in his transition affairs, openly calling for selecting GOP senator Rick Scott, who agreed to speed up nomination processes for Trump’s cabinet picks, to be the next Senate Majority Leader and taking part in Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

And Trump apparently likes him back. “We have a new star,” Trump said in his victory speech last week. “A star is born — Elon!”

It’s unclear whether Musk will be given a position in the next administration. But his close ties to Trump, who is expected to fill the government with China hawks that push for tariffs and de-couplings, might make things more complicated for Musk’s relations with Beijing, who strongly opposes such tariffs and de-couplings.

Musk has visited China twice in the last two years, where he shook hands with Qin Gang, the now fallen former Chinese foreign minister, and conversed with Li Qiang, the current Premier, whom Musk proudly said he had known for years, “since early Shanghai days”. Li was the top Chinese Communist Party official of Shanghai, where Musk’s Tesla runs a gigantic factory to produce vehicles locally.

To get a sense of what Musk’s views are of China, I sifted through his past posts on social media and interviews he’d given where he made comments about China. Here are some key takeaways.

Excited for China’s achievements in technology and infrastructure

Musk is a tech guy first and foremost. So it comes as no surprise that he has repeatedly praised and appeared to be amazed by China’s progress in all things technology.

“China’s space program is very impressive,” he wrote on X in October.

“The China space program is far more advanced than most people realize,” he wrote on X last year.

“Outstanding accomplishment by China!” he exclaimed on what was then Twitter in 2021 after China released the first photo of Mars taken by the country’s first Mars rover.

And he loves China’s infrastructure, posting multiple times on his social media through the years about how “incredible” and “advanced” China has been with building infrastructures.

In 2021, he replied to Xinhua, China’s top state media outlet, on Twitter: “The economic prosperity that China has achieved is truly amazing, especially in infrastructure! I encourage people to visit and see for themselves.”

Musk is also impressed by China’s advance in renewable energy. 

“Few seem to realize that China is leading the world in renewable energy generation and electric vehicles. Whatever you may think of China, this is simply a fact,” he wrote on Twitter in 2022. 

“China, especially, is doing an amazing job moving towards sustainable energy generation & transport,” he wrote on Twitter in 2018.

He even penned an article for China’s internet regulator Cyberspace Administration of China, asserting that Chinese companies will be an essential part of the future of renewable energy.

“I believe that the world will transition to a sustainable future through a combination of solar and wind energy plus battery storage and electric vehicles. I am pleased to see more and more companies joining this field,” he wrote. “Chinese companies will be a force to be reckoned with in the cause of energy innovation.”

Friendly with Chinese government and officials

Musk hasn’t been shy in showing off his access to top Chinese officials and his high regard for them.

After a short trip to China in 2018, Musk wrote on Twitter that the “world has never seen human energy & vigor at such scale”. 

He said he had “excellent meetings with senior leaders in China” and they were “very thoughtful about the long-term future”.

During an April trip to China this year, Musk posted a photo of him sitting down with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, writing “honored to meet with Premier Li Qiang. We have known each other now for many years, since early Shanghai days”.

Musk’s relations with the Chinese government have been cordial for the most part. But one hiccup took place last year over a comment he made on social media.

Replying to a post questioning whether Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, secretly funded the development of the coronavirus in Wuhan Institute of Virology, Musk replied with an affirmative answer.

Although the point of his answer was to attack Dr. Fauci, it nonetheless accepts the premise of the question, which is that the coronavirus was developed in a lab in China. And China was not happy with it.

Global Times, a nationalist state media, immediately published an article slamming Musk’s answer. 

“These remarks of his have been continuously used by those US right-wing and anti-China media hostile to China as material to frame China,” it wrote, accusing Musk of biting the hands that fed him, likely referring to how Musk had been benefiting from his Tesla business in China. China is reportedly Tesla’s second largest market.

But the incident didn’t seem to have soured Musk’s relations with Beijing. Three months later, the billionaire was in China meeting with senior officials, including Qin Gang, then head of China’s foreign ministry.

After the meeting, the Chinese foreign ministry released a statement, according to which, Musk said that the “interests of the United States and China are interlinked, like conjoined twins inseparable from each other”. 

What’s more interesting was that the statement said Musk’s “Tesla is opposed to decoupling and cutting off supply chains”.

Tariffs or no tariffs

The trade war with China was one of the signature policies put forth by the first Trump administration. If the former and newly elected president believes in one thing and one thing only on trade, it’s tariffs.

And this is where Musk’s and Trump’s views might diverge, for Musk doesn’t seem to favor putting tariffs on Chinese goods, especially electric vehicles.

After the Biden Administration raised tariffs on Chinese imported electric vehicles from 25% to 100% in May, Musk publicly opposed it.

“Neither Tesla nor I asked for these tariffs, in fact I was surprised when they were announced. Things that inhibit freedom of exchange or distort the market are not good,” Musk said during an interview.

“Tesla competes quite well in the market in China with no tariffs and no deferential support,” he added. “I’m in favor of no tariffs."

But just earlier this year, he warned that “If there are no trade barriers established”, Chinese car companies “will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world."

Musk’s replies on Twitter in 2018 to then-President Trump’s tweet on China’s trade deficit with the US best demonstrates his ambivalence on tariffs.

“An American car going to China pays 25% import duty, but a Chinese car coming to the US only pays 2.5%, a tenfold difference,” Musk wrote.

“I am against import duties in general, but the current rules make things very difficult,” he added. “It’s like competing in an Olympic race wearing lead shoes.”

Taiwan

Some of the most controversial comments Musk has publicly made were about Taiwan, the self-ruling island democracy that China claims sovereignty over.

“(China’s) policy has been to reunite Taiwan with China.” he said during an interview last year, where he described himself as an “outsider” who’s “got a pretty good understanding” of China.

“From this standpoint, it may be just analogous to Hawaii or something, like an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China,” he said. 

In 2022, he made an even more explosive suggestion, reported by the Financial Times, that the best way forward between Taiwan and China was to let Taiwan submit itself to Beijing’s control.

“My recommendation ,” he said, “would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable, probably won’t make everyone happy. And it’s possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong.”

Musk’s comments received a warm welcome from Qin Gang, who was the top Chinese diplomat in the US at the time.

“I would like to thank @elonmusk for his call for peace across the Taiwan Strait and his idea about establishing a special administrative zone for Taiwan,” Qin wrote on Twitter.

“Actually, Peaceful reunification and One Country, Two Systems are our basic principles for resolving the Taiwan question and the best approach to realizing national reunification.”