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Image source,fake images
China is Tesla’s largest market after the United States, accounting for about a quarter of the company’s global sales in 2020.
Elon Musk, CEO of US electric vehicle maker Tesla, said that if Tesla vehicles are used for surveillance activities in China, his company will be “closed.”
His comments are in response to reports that the Chinese military has banned Tesla vehicles from its facilities. The Chinese military previously expressed security concerns about data collected by cameras on board the brand’s cars.
China is Tesla’s largest market after the United States, accounting for about a quarter of the company’s global sales in 2020. According to the data, Tesla has gradually started to become a mainstream model in Chinese society. The Model 3 alone sold 138,000 vehicles in China last year.
Last Saturday (March 20), Musk said that if a company engages in activities to monitor foreign governments, the “negative impact on the company will be extremely bad.”
“We have very strong reasons to keep any information confidential,” Musk told an influential Chinese business forum via online video. “If Tesla uses a car to engage in espionage in China or anywhere else, they will shut us down.”
According to the “Wall Street Journal” report, the Chinese government has restricted the use of Tesla vehicles by the military, state-owned companies in sensitive industries, and the staff of major institutions, citing concerns that the vehicle could lead to death. domestic vehicle leakage. Safety information.
Image source,Reuters
Musk defended the claim that the Tesla vehicles were used for surveillance activities.
The report quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that Chinese authorities have conducted a safety assessment of Tesla vehicles. Chinese officials have said that the car’s sensors can record visual images of surrounding places.
The autonomous driving system that Tesla Motors is proud of is based on information from the surrounding environment captured by millimeter wave cameras, sensors and radars, and analyzed and processed using visual algorithms to automatically slow down and avoid obstacles.
So, Tesla installed eight wrap-around cameras around his car, supplemented by 12 ultrasonic sensors and a millimeter wave front-facing radar.
Last year, after testing Tesla’s fully automated driving, a user found that the car’s software collected roughly 4GB of data in one day and uploaded it to the server.
The Chinese government also reportedly believes that Tesla can obtain various data through the car, such as the car’s time, method and location, as well as the driver’s personal information and the contact list of the mobile phone synced with the car. car. China is concerned that certain data may be sent back to the United States.
An ad circulating on the internet also showed that a certain unit of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army issued an advisory in March this year, stating that Tesla vehicles are equipped with a number of technical devices that can expose target locations, such as omni-directional cameras. and ultrasonic sensors.
The notice stated that to ensure the security of military secrets, owners must therefore park their Tesla cars outside of military family bedrooms.
Image source,EPA
Tesla in China
Tesla has always had a very good relationship with Beijing, and even the outside world regards it as a model for foreign operations in China. As CEO, Musk has publicly praised China many times.
In 2018, Tesla received approval to build a factory in Shanghai, making it the largest foreign-invested manufacturing project in Shanghai. The Chinese government has also provided other foreign companies with unmatched benefits, including tax incentives, low-interest loans, and allowed them to build factories only.
Since the 1990s, China has prohibited foreign auto companies from establishing wholly-owned subsidiaries in China. This has forced foreign companies to establish 50-50 joint ventures with Chinese entities to share profits, technology and experience with the Chinese side.
But at that time, the trade war between China and the US began, and China was facing serious external challenges and concerns about its economic fate. In this case, Musk’s company became the lucky one, rarely received the green light, and became the first Western company. to build a wholly-owned factory in China Automobile companies.
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In 2018, Tesla received approval to establish a super factory in Shanghai.
Chinese media reported that it took Tesla and the Shanghai government just three months from signing the contract to acquiring the land, and just eight months from building the factory to launching the first body. Currently, the Shanghai super factory has a production capacity of 250,000 vehicles and Tesla has set an ambitious goal of achieving 450,000 vehicles this year.
China is the largest automotive market in the world. The Chinese government has been vigorously promoting electric vehicles. In many cities like Beijing, the purchase of new energy vehicles not only enjoys tax breaks, but is also exempt from the restrictions imposed on license plates. Strong market demand helped Tesla make a profit of US $ 721 million (£ 519 million) in 2020.
Despite close cooperation, in addition to the crisis caused by data security, Tesla has faced confusion in China many times.
In January this year, a consumer in the southern Chinese city of Nanchang bought a Tesla Model 3 for just a few days. The power was suddenly cut off while charging and could not be turned on. Tesla staff claimed that this was caused by too many. This statement caused discontent among car owners and many netizens.
The Chinese company State Grid Nanchang Power Supply Company later replied that the voltage in the area was stable and there were no abnormalities, and suggested that Tesla “invite professionals to carefully investigate the cause of the vehicle’s charging failure.” Chinese official media also criticized Tesla’s response as “throwing the pot,” and Tesla subsequently apologized for the comments.
What happened to Microsoft and Apple?
For a long time, many Chinese have been disturbed by the continued expansion of American corporate giants into the Chinese market, especially when their products are believed to collect user information or harm national security.
As early as 2014, Chinese officials issued an advisory to various central government departments, stating that “all computer products cannot install the Windows 8 operating system,” which attracted public attention for a time.
Image source,Reuters
Tesla CEO Musk participated in the opening ceremony of the Shanghai factory.
Beijing did not provide further explanations, but the official media analysis indicated that this is because the Windows 8 system “hinders the security of national information.” Before Microsoft discloses the Windows 8 source code to the Chinese government, if the system is purchased, Microsoft can control China’s Information Security.
Officials from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also stated that the Chinese government will continue to increase efforts to develop its own operating system and support the implementation of self-developed systems.
That same year, Chinese President Xi Jinping introduced the slogan “Inviolability of Information Sovereignty” in a speech in Brazil. In the following years, China vigorously promoted a series of laws and regulations on information and security. In 2017, China began to implement the “Cyber Security Law”.
The law stipulates that personal information and important data collected and generated by critical information infrastructure operators in China must be stored in China. If provided overseas due to business needs, it must pass the government-set safety assessment.
Under this circumstance, Apple announced that as of February 2018, data stored in iCloud by mainland Chinese users, including photos, videos, documents, and system backups, will be migrated to the cloud located in China. Guizhou company.
Across the ocean, the United States has also continually raised questions about the security of information about Chinese companies’ products in recent years.
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Sino-US relations are at their most tense in many years.
During his tenure, the Donald Trump administration has consistently stated that Beijing may use some equipment from Chinese companies for espionage activities. For this reason, US telecommunications companies are prohibited from using federal funds to purchase communications products and equipment that pose a threat to the US national security These companies include Huawei and ZTE.
Washington also included Huawei and its multiple subsidiaries on the entity list, requiring US companies to obtain US government approval before exporting parts and technologies to Huawei.
In January this year, the Trump administration also announced a ban on transactions related to eight Chinese mobile apps, including Alipay, QQ Wallet, and WeChat Pay. The reason is that these applications can collect user information, allowing China to “track the location of federal employees and contractors and create files of personal information.”
At the weekend meeting, Musk, CEO of California-based Tesla Inc., called on China and the United States to strengthen mutual trust. He tried to alleviate external concerns about the sharing of sensitive data between multinational companies and their governments, citing as an example TikTok, a platform owned by Chinese technology company Bytedance.
Last year, former US President Trump also threatened to ban TikTok in the US due to concerns that user data could be turned over to the Chinese government.
“Even if there is espionage, what can the country in question get? Does this really matter?” Musk said.
As the world’s two largest economies, China-US relations are at their most tense in many years. Last week, at a meeting of high-level officials from China and the United States in Alaska, diplomats from the two countries repented and lashed out at each other.
