Ethnic cleansing, police enforced free speech repression, no freedom of movement. These are the realities plaguing China’s nearly 1.4 billion citizens.
Things are so bad that the Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index now ranks China below Bahrain and Russia – scoring among the worst countries in the world on personal freedom, economic freedom and human freedom. Only a person of startling ignorance could see China’s authoritarian civil rights-crushing repression as acceptable.
That person, apparently, is Elon Musk.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO recently praised China's government, going so far as to say that its officials may be more responsive to its citizens’ needs than those in America.
Seriously, is Musk trolling everyone?
When California temporarily closed his car plant due to COVID-19 concerns, Musk defied the state’s lockdown order as dramatically and publicly as he could. But he remained shamefully silent as China boarded and barricaded people in their homes and intimidated doctors who revealed the communist government’s COVID cover-up.
Perhaps Musk’s business attachment to China has caused him to become blind to the Chinese Communist Party’s despicable attacks on freedom.
Musk has called China “the future” and has predicted that the country will soon surpass the United States as the world's superpower. That explains why he frequently meets with the country’s top leaders in Beijing and recently received over $1.6 billion in loans to build a Tesla factory in the country. Evidently, Musk wanted to get into China while he still could – even if it meant turning a blind eye toward the country’s troubling authoritarianism.
His cozy relationship with the regime appears to be putting U.S. national security at risk. From traveling to China and solidifying his business presence in the country just days after the President ordered U.S. companies to look for alternative markets, to partnering in China with a business magnate who serves on a senior CCP leadership advisory board, Musk appears to have little to no concern for stopping the country’s predatory abuses.
The newly minted “Richest Man of Earth” may be kowtowing to China because his companies have become dependent on Chinese subsidies.
Musk has already amassed over $5 billion in U.S. government aid. However, at the end of 2019, one of the most critical taxpayer-funded incentives for Tesla — the federal electric vehicle tax credit, which provides up to $7,500 a year to American drivers of EVs — hit its expiration point.
China stepped in and offered to subsidize Tesla and continues to do so heavily, even despite some recent cuts.
It seems oddly coincidental that Musk began cementing his China operations just as this crucial U.S. subsidy began to phase out. Given the speed at which Tesla sales plummeted in other countries that phased out this tax credit, he may have felt the need to offset potential losses in the U.S. with gains in the People’s Republic, licking the boots of the country’s corrupt leaders in the process.
Whatever the reason may be for Musk continuing to suggest that China’s government is better than America’s, it’s infuriating. His business empire is still very much tied to the goodwill of American taxpayers, yet he continues to spread CCP propaganda.
It is outrageous that the federal government would direct millions of American’s hard-earned dollars to a person who attacks the United States, while defending a government that is among the worst human-right abusers in the world. If Musk is unwilling to recognize the threat that China poses, then perhaps it’s time to stop using American tax dollars to subsidize the South African billionaire.
Drew Johnson is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Read Drew Johnson's Reports — More Here.
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