Capitalists bending the knee to socialism
Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the other billionaires meeting in China have to sign and operate within China’s socialist market framework there. Elon Musk, in particular, has been working within this system for nearly eight years, beginning with the cooperative agreement signed in July 2018 with the Shanghai municipal government. China explicitly defines its economic model as a “socialist market economy,” which combines market competition with strong state control.
To sell cars in China, Tesla cannot function under a Western laissez-faire model. While Musk has benefited from government support to scale Tesla in both the United States and China, the playbook is different in each case: in the U.S., he used subsidy-driven capitalism to build private wealth; in China, he aligned private enterprise with state priorities.
What makes this especially striking is that on X, Musk often portrays socialism as harmful while simultaneously using socialist-style state support in both countries to advance his own interests.