Opinion | The Age of Influence: Why China Grudges Musk's Pivot to India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in New York last year. (Photo/PTI)

Like much of the world, Elon Musk has decided that he too will ‘make in India’.

We may not have known of Musk’s tilt towards Bharat but for his rather public declaration on ‘X’ which is of course a platform he owns.

While Musk has let it be known that he will be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the coming days, he hasn’t opened his cards just yet. But it’s being reliably speculated that Musk would in all probability set up a plant to manufacture his Tesla EV motor car in India.

Make no mistake, Musk’s pivot to India is prompted by unalloyed self-interest. His EV manufacturing base in the communist redoubt has spluttered over the last few months. Local EV manufacturers have out-zipped Tesla sales in China. Worse, Tesla is trailing in the Chinese EV-car sales sweepstakes at a time when there has been a general slowdown in demand. In short, parked in lots, gathering rust, Musk’s Teslas are on a road to nowhere in China and that’s bad for business. The situation is so precarious that there is an urgent need to cut overheads prompting a 10 per cent job cut across Tesla motors.

Musk is naturally hoping that Indian consumers will help his Tesla motors accelerate out of the rough patch.

The Modi government in India is certainly doing its bit to pave Musk’s entry here. In a bid to provide Tesla with a smooth road to cruise on, the NDA government’s new EV policy has lowered import duties to 15 per cent from 100 per cent for car models costing over $35,000 if their makers promise to pump in $500 million to set up manufacturing units. This big policy tweak has been the primary driver inducing Musk to now bet on India after China. Additionally, Musk’s ambitious satcom venture Starlink has also got in-principle approval from the Indian government.

Of course, there’s a lot in this for India too. Jobs for one. And, in the longer run, setting up an EV ecosystem will lessen India’s dependence on the import of crude oil and help reduce India’s carbon footprint in line with net zero emission targets.

The prospective Modi-Musk meeting has irked China. The communist party mouthpiece the Global Times has warned Musk against his dalliance with India. This is a laughable bit of hypocrisy. The Global Times was the first to heap scorn on India for turning down Chinese company BYD’s proposal to build a $1-billion EV plant in partnership with an Indian company. Does the Chinese government’s propaganda rag care more for Musk’s business viability than a Chinese EV maker’s fortunes? Highly unlikely.

A big part of China’s peevishness has to do with its constant need for affirmation. The love of being ‘liked’ is a particular weakness of strong states. Presided over by autocratic commissars that lack popular mandate, Chinese administrations are perennially on the constant lookout for certificates of legitimacy.

And for years China’s despotic communist party has used every available endorsement – a state visit, a call up to the high table of diplomacy, a favourable mention in the Western press, investments by global business moguls, and the arrival of entertainment stars – as a signal to the domestic constituency of its wider acceptability.

This courting of China by the high priests of the West began in the 1970s and history is replete with captivating instances.

Many today will not remember legendary prizefighter Muhammad Ali’s visit to China in 1980. The “black Henry Kissinger” was deployed at the height of the Cold War by then US President Jimmy Carter to get China to sign on to the proposed American boycott of the Moscow Summer Olympics. Ali, the adonis of the boxing ring, who famously lacked even the tiniest diplomatic bone in his sculpted body, managed to pull off a most delicate diplomatic task.

The Chinese were so delighting in the West’s embrace, as it were, that they conveniently ditched the notion of communist solidarity leaving the Soviet Union beached.

Little has changed. Musk like Ali is a “maverick global celebrity” and for China the eccentric business czar’s patronage, so to speak, was precious PR ammunition. Musk rolled into China just when, as a Reuters report notes, “foreign capitalists were questioning” the People’s Republic’s bankability under Xi Jinping. Musk was thus declared “Beijing’s ideal foreign investor”.

But now Musk’s preference for India over China has had the effect of denying the latter vital bragging rights on the world stage. Musk’s decision to ‘friend’ India coincides with Apple’s Tim Cook, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, and Starbucks’ Laxman Narasimhan lessening their exposure to China.

It remains to be seen how deeply this fall from being the cynosure of all will impact China that, in this endlessly dawning age of influence, still thrives on ‘likes’.