Tesla Faces Backlash in China from Viral Video
Voice of America
In 2018, Elon Musk signed an agreement with the Shanghai Municipal Government to open a plant to make Tesla vehicles, making it the first non-Chinese auto company with a solely owned subsidiary in China since the 1990s. A female Tesla owner climbed on top of a car’s roof at the Tesla booth to protest her car’s brake malfunction at the Shanghai auto show Monday. The booth beefed up its security after the incident. pic.twitter.com/ct7RmF1agM
Now the company is facing a backlash over its electric car business there. And, experts say, by making use of anti-American public sentiment, the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is making a move against Tesla that is well-known to foreign companies with technologies it covets: To stay in China’s lucrative market, a company must share its tech with Beijing. “There is little doubt in my mind that the CCP is squeezing the American company through a controlled burst of anti-American xenophobia because of Tesla’s phenomenal success in China, its advanced technology, and its close involvement in U.S. space programs,” said Miles Yu, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who specializes in U.S. and Chinese military and diplomatic history, and U.S. policy toward China.FILE - Danny Fenster, center, hugs his mother Rose Fenster as former U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson, right, looks on at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, Nov. 16, 2021. Journalist Fenster was held in a Myanmar prison. Harrison Li holds a photo of his father, Kai Li, on Jan. 23, 2024, in Palo Alto, Calif. Li's father, Kai, remains detained in China on espionage charges his family says are bogus and FILE - A Hamas cameraman stands behind Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, released after more than five years in captivity, on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on Oct. 18, 2011. FILE - Families and friends of current and former hostages and detainees gather outside of the White House in Washington, May 3, 2023, to ask the Biden administration for more help. FILE - Joey and Paula Reed pose for a photo with a portrait of their son Marine veteran and Russian prisoner Trevor Reed at their home in Fort Worth, Texas, Feb. 15, 2022. FILE - In this March 16, 2016, file photo, American student Otto Warmbier, center, is escorted at the Supreme Court in Pyongyang, North Korea.
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