China has a fast moment.
The country’s internet giants, once celebrated as engines of economic viability, are now despised for exploiting user data, abusing workers and harassing renewal. Jack Ma, co-founder of e-commerce titan Alibaba, is an idol that has come down, with his companies under the government’s investigation into the ways in which they have secured their grip on the world’s second largest economy.
But there is one technological figure who manages to keep the Chinese public in his trolley, and the mix of illegal bombing and captain of the industry seems tailored for this time of frustrated dreams and disillusionment: Elon Musk.
“He can fight the establishment and become the richest man on earth – and avoid being beaten in the process,” said Jane Zhang, the founder and CEO of ShellPay, a blockchain company in Shanghai. “He’s everyone’s hope.”
Whether it’s out of hope, envy or morbid curiosity – like spectators hoping to see one of its rockets sink into a fiery explosion – China can not get enough of Mr. Musk not. Tesla’s electric cars are big sellers in the country, and the government’s growing ambitions have generated a community of fans watching SpaceX’s every launch.
Social platforms are filled with videos and articles that reflect on whether the South African-born billionaire is a pioneer or a fraud, and explores everything from his education to his taste in Beijing’s hot pot joints. Start-up founders swear by his belief in ‘first principles thinking’, which seeks solutions by investigating problems at their most fundamental level. A stack of books by Chinese authors promises to reveal the secrets of the “Silicon Valley Iron Man”, this is the nickname that apparently stuck in China, not King of Mars or Rocket Man.
In a long thread about mr. Musk on the question-and-answer website Zhihu, a user named Moonshake writes that most people start out full of hope but gradually accept the “mediocrity” that is their fate.
“Only a superman like Musk can move beyond the endless mediocrity and to the infinite to see the beauty of the universe,” Moonshake writes.
Another user in the same thread says that he named his son Elon to express his admiration. The user did not reply to a comment.
Tesla’s giant factory near Shanghai began production in 2019, increasing the company’s production capacity. When Tesla’s share price reached a new high in January, Mr. Musk made the richest man on the planet, Chinese fans demanded credit. (Mr Musk’s response to the news – “Well, back to work …” – was held 22,000 times on the Chinese social platform Weibo.)
Later that month, when Mr. Musk endorsing the run-up to GameStop shares was much nailed down in China, and the distrust of major financial institutions attracted the drama.
“Occupied Wall Street could never be copied in China,” said Suji Yan, an entrepreneur and investor in Shanghai. To do that, ‘you would have to go on the streets,’ he said. It is safer to buy prosthetic shares.
The apprehension that many Chinese technology workers have for their industry is exacerbated by their feeling that it is no longer really inventing or innovating. While Mr. Musk does not want to build futuristic cars and colonize the cosmos, they see the best thoughts of their generation to design mobile games, and they can figure out how to place more ads on social media and speculate in real estate.
“China is no longer crazy about Silicon Valley,” he said. Yan said. Tech bases ‘have all become cardboard cutouts’, he said, and investors will not touch on ideas that seem ‘crazy’ from a distance.
Musk’s acolytes are a passionate bunch everywhere. But in China, its popularity is helped by the authoritarian government’s embrace of Tesla – and vice versa – when the United States and China have never less trusted each other’s high-tech enterprises.
People in China were amazed at the way Mr. Musk handled the country’s harsh authorities. They were more critical of the ways he sometimes treated his own workers. He lashed out at health officials in California last year who demanded that a Tesla factory stay closed due to concerns about the coronavirus. The company has also been scrutinized for workplace injuries and racial discrimination.
“He’s a true dreamer and creator, but he’s also a cold-blooded, self-absorbed megalomaniac,” Hong Bo, a long-time tech commentator in China who writes under the name Keso, said of Mr. Musk said. “I admire his courage in breaking outdated conventions, and yet I do not like his trampling on the core of humanity.”
Mr. Musk and Tesla did not respond to emails to comment.
The frustration with Big Tech is part of a wider ailment in China. For many young people, it seems that decades of incredible economic growth have only resulted in tougher competition for opportunities, less stability, and less participation in the direction of life.
On the Chinese internet, the term that gripped the mood is ‘involution’, previously used by anthropologists to describe agricultural societies that have grown in size or complexity without becoming more advanced or productive.
The feeling among young Chinese that they are fighting harder for a slimmer chance of material gain makes them hope to ‘reorganize life in a different way’, said Biao Xiang, who studies social change in China and director of the Max Planck is. Institute of Social Anthropology in Germany.
In addition to criticizing the high-pressure work culture of the technology industry and the labor abuse of the gig economy, young Chinese are more skeptical about the huge impact that internet platforms like Alibaba are having on trade and finance. However, Professor Xiang believes that people in China have not turned against enterprises that are making technological advances of a more tangible nature, and therefore Mr. Musk’s industrial optimism still appeals.
“They are not really against technology,” Professor Xiang said. “They’re more against this kind of platform-style social relationship manipulation.”
China does not have a shortage of outspoken technology signatories. It’s just that it seems like their careers never go very far without getting into trouble.
There’s Justin Sun, the crypto-currency that paid $ 4.6 million to eat with Warren E. Buffett but later apologized for ‘excessive self-promotion’. Or Jia Yueting, who tackled the best Apple in smartphones and was buried in debt. It seems that even Mr. Alibaba’s mother helped catalyze the government’s onslaught on him by speaking a little candidly at an event about his annoyance with regulators.
Nevertheless, the style of mr. Musk in the devil-care-care probably attracts little attention in China if he does not try to tackle big problems for civilization like sustainable energy. In a country where most people have seen that new technology mostly results in life improvements, there is less cynicism about the distant future than in the West.
Young Chinese see Jack Ma and Pony Ma, head of social media giant Tencent, “more as rich men and successful businessmen” as Musk-like visionaries, says Flex Yang, a co-founder of Babel Finance, a Hong Kong -supplier. of financial services for cryptocurrencies.
The two Mas, who are not related, were simply “in the right place at the right time,” Mr. Yang said.
Jack Ma and Mr. Musk shared a stage during a technology conference in Shanghai in 2019. There may never have been a more similar pair. Mr. Mom was serious and engaged, at ease in the role of conference bulkhead. Mr. Musk was creepy and funny. The two talked a lot past each other. Mr. Mom said the answer to super-intelligent machines is better education for humans. On this, Mr. Musk just laughed.
In a compilation of awkward moments from the event posted on the Bilibili video site, the remarks were cruel, mostly to Mr. Ma.
“This is the person who was once looked up to as a god in China,” one person wrote. “In the presence of a true master, he is like a monkey acting.”
Alibaba declined to comment.