Elon Musk praises China once again, says ‘the rest of the world should follow its …’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has once again praised China’s rapid adoption of electric vehicles, batteries and solar power. “China is doing incredibly well building solar + batteries for power and EVs for transport,” Musk wrote in a post on X, adding “Something the rest of the world should do”. The conversation started when venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya shared an online post claiming that China’s economy is slowing down rapidly. “Chinese growth is falling off a cliff. The CCP just announced its official growth target of between 4.5% and 5%,” Palihapitiya wrote, adding “This is the lowest growth in China in 30 years”.


He further suggested that countries like Venezuela and Iran, which have large oil reserves, are not fully available as suppliers due to sanctions, conflict, or instability. “At the same time, with Venezuela and Iran off the chess board wrt energy supply, they are increasingly challenged in getting the atoms they need to sustain themselves.”


“It makes for a very constrained set of decisions over these next few years, especially wrt Taiwan,” Palihapitiya concluded.


An X user called the analysis “a bit wrong” writing: “China at present is not really dependent on middle eastern oil and gas, it can easily supplement via Russia + African sources…And in the medium term it doesn’t matter as it’s on the verge of becoming the world’s first electrostate…If this was China 2016 it would be worrying, but it’s China 2026”.


Elon Musk quipped responding:


“Electrostate is accurate. China is doing incredibly well building solar + batteries for power and EVs for transport. Something the rest of the world should do”.

Not a first when Elon Musk is impressed with China

Speaking on the Moonshot podcast earlier this year, Elon Musk praised China, jokingly saying the country does everything he says. Discussing energy usage of data centres and reliance on batteries to meet power needs, Musk said “It seems like China listens to everything I say, and does it basically or they’re just doing it independently.” “I don’t know, but they certainly have a massive battery pack output, they’re making a vast number of electric cars, and vast amounts of solar,” he stated, adding “These are all the things I said we should do here”.