GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has a point in his May 2023 Twitter comments about entrepreneur Elon Musk’s assent to items on the agenda of the repressive, predatory, murderous government of China.
According to the tweet, Elon Musk “met with China’s foreign minister yesterday to oppose decoupling and referred to the U.S. and Communist China as ‘conjoined twins.’ ”
Tesla’s VP in China reposted that statement on Weibo in China, but curiously not here in the U.S. In October, Elon issued an unprompted call for “reunification” of Taiwan and won a favorable tax benefit in Shanghai days later. I’ve been one of the most vocal supporters of Elon’s effort to transform Twitter, but it’s a real risk to the U.S. when the CCP turns our most prominent business leaders and celebrities—Tim Cook, Larry Fink, LeBron James, Elon Musk—into puppets to advance their agenda. That tilts the global scales of perception in China’s favor—and sadly, it’s working.
Ramaswamy’s comment is still on point because, as of September 2023, Musk has yet to relinquish his muteness or wishy-washiness about China and the CCP, making him one of the most prominent of the regime’s many prominent enablers. Instead, Musk should be honest with himself and with the world, and he should indeed decouple: get Tesla out of China instead of letting it stay there to serve Chinazi interests and propaganda.
That would be tough to do, as it would be for all the other CEOs and boards of major foreign companies operating in China who should be getting out. But Elon Musk has proven that he can do tough things.
