Indian media expressed surprise and anger this week when Tesla CEO Elon Musk canceled a planned trip to India and made a surprise visit to China instead.
The Indian opposition, hoping to make progress against the ruling BJP party in the long parliamentary election currently underway, leaped at the opportunity to claim that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies are driving foreign investors away.
Musk was supposed to visit New Delhi last week to meet with Modi, announce a new $3 billion Tesla automobile factory, and discuss plans for importing Teslas into India.
As recently as April 10, Musk said he was looking forward to the trip – but he abruptly canceled the trip, explaining in a terse April 20 post on his social media site X that “very heavy Tesla obligations require that the visit to India be delayed, but I do look forward to visiting later this year.”
The following weekend, Musk popped up in Beijing for an unannounced trip that included meetings with Premier Li Qiang. China proceeded to give Tesla a much-desired seal of approval for the Internet-linked self-driving feature of its automobiles and China’s giant search engine company Baidu announced a deal to provide navigational data for the system.
Indian media, especially outlets that are often critical of India’s rival China, erupted in indignation over Musk’s snub, as quoted by Reuters on Tuesday:
The Mirror Now news channel ran a prime time news segment with a tagline “Shoddy ethics or simply business?”, with the anchor saying “here in India everybody was shocked.”
Digital news service News9 ran a segment late on Monday on Musk, saying “Hello China, Goodbye India?”. It then flashed on the screen, “VERY HEAVY TESLA OBLIGATIONS? China visit a week after cancelling India”.
Neither Tesla or Modi’s office responded to requests for comment. Musk said on April 20 he looks forward to visiting India later this year, but the Indian government has not commented on his trip cancellation or China visit.
If Musk had gone through with his original plans and announced a multi-billion-dollar investment in India after meeting with Modi, it would clearly have boosted Modi and his party during the parliamentary election, which began on April 19 and will continue until mid-May. The election was broken into multiple phases to account for India’s huge size and population.
Musk’s snub was therefore catnip for the Indian opposition, which mocked Modi for meekly allowing the Tesla billionaire to flitter off to China without a word of objection and suggested Modi’s India might not be as attractive to foreign businesses as the prime minister claims.
“Such is the lack of faith in the Modi govt’s regulatory policies, that big businesses are turning to China over India repeatedly,” hooted Shama Mohamed, national spokesman for the largest opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC, commonly referred to as “Congress”).
Another Congress leader, lawmaker P. Chidambaram, said Musk blowing off Modi to visit China and pour further investments into India’s rival was something voters should “think about.”
Chidambaram said Modi “privately fumes and publicly claims that the Indian government is a majboot Sarkar.” Majboot Sarkar means “strong government,” so the Congress lawmaker was mocking Modi as a blowhard who boasts of his strength while cowering before insults from the likes of Elon Musk.
“It was odd that Elon Musk was coming all the way to India to meet an outgoing Prime Minister. He too has now read the writing on the wall and decided to put off his visit,” said Congress General Secretary for Communications Jairam Ramesh, implying that Musk believes Modi will lose the current election.
If that happens, Ramesh said the opposition government will “promote electric vehicles even more aggressively” than Modi did.
“I myself am a user of one!” he added.
Modi seemed like a heavy favorite going into the election, although outside observers have been struggling to read signs and portents during the lengthy balloting process, as a few major controversies have blown up that might have shifted the odds. Some observers speculate that Modi’s turn to stronger rhetoric against Indian Muslims might be a sign of desperation as BJP sees early poll results it does not like.
As for Congress claiming that Musk’s snub of Modi signals foreign investors are shifting from India to China, the general worldwide trend is still in the other direction, as international corporations seek to “de-risk” their supply chains by relying less heavily on Chinese manufacturing.
The Economic Times of India speculated on Tuesday that Musk’s heavy investments in China have left him increasingly at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party. The editorial noted that Musk’s public statements tend to be feisty and combative of most governments, including the Biden administration in the United States, especially when he views those governments as hostile to free speech – but he is positively servile and obsequious toward China, an eager “cheerleader” for the world’s worst censor.
From this perspective, Musk dashing off to Beijing instead of New Delhi might have been a result of the Chinese Communist Party flexing its muscles and threatening Musk’s interests in a way he knows India would never do. Faced with potentially losing Tesla sales to Chinese regulation, and knowing his $3 billion in investments would still be welcome in India a month from now – no matter how the election shakes out – Musk made a dismaying but logical choice.
The Times of India (TOI) noted that Tesla is going through a “tumultuous” period of “declining EV sales that have led to a significant cost-reduction initiative, including cutting over 10% of its global workforce.”
This state of anxiety gave the Chinese Communist Party even more leverage over Musk and the Party was eager to use it, viewing Musk as “a welcome antidote to the tough talk from U.S. officials, which played out most recently during a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.”
“Musk’s deepening ties with China reflect a broader trend of American tech giants who leverage China’s vast market and manufacturing prowess, only to find themselves increasingly dependent on Chinese policies and economic shifts,” TOI said.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) saw the situation in stark terms after Musk announced he would not be traveling to India. Musk wants India to sweeten the deal for bringing Tesla into the country, and his recent moves sent a clear signal that he is willing to play hardball with whoever sits in the Prime Minister’s office after the current round of elections:
Tesla stands to benefit from a policy India announced last month to attract global electric-vehicle makers. The new policy slashes import duties from 100% to 15% for cars with import prices of $35,000 and above for manufacturers who invest at least $500 million in a plant in the country, and meet certain other conditions. Tesla has long sought reduced duties for its cars as a precursor to firming up investment plans in India.
Musk’s change in plans marks a fresh setback for long-running negotiations between India and the electric-car pioneer for its entry to the world’s third-largest automotive market, and prompts questions over Tesla’s India plans. Two longtime top executives who departed the company last week included at least one who traveled to India for market-entry talks with officials in New Delhi.
One other factor mentioned by both Indian and overseas observers of the Musk snub is that China’s rulers are very nervous about tech entrepreneurs, both native-born and foreign, acquiring too much influence over the Chinese population.
To relieve their anxiety, the mandarins in Beijing like to crack the whip now and then, forcing tech moguls to perform gestures of submission and clearly acknowledge the Party has ultimate power over all things, including technology it barely understands. Pushing Elon Musk to insult rival India, then race to Beijing for a command performance and a fresh round of enthusiastic applause for the Chinese system, is exactly the sort of submission ritual the Party enjoys.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.