Elon Musk has opinions on how a lot of the world’s countries should be run.

He has weighed in on elections in Germany on behalf of a far-right party, sparred with the government of his native South Africa, and called for the removal of the president of Ukraine, not to mention the two-month siege he has waged against America’s federal bureaucracy.

But one country tends to get a pass from the world’s richest man. He is, in his own words, “kind of pro-China.” The self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist” has not applied that position to China’s draconian censorship regime, and Musk has defended the Chinese government’s positions on a range of other issues.

From a business perspective, this makes sense. China is vital to Musk’s car company Tesla as both a producer of vehicles and as a consumer market. Musk is also hardly unusual among major global tech CEOs in defending China.

“Musk’s comments on China aren’t out of the norm for the CEO of a major Western business,” said Isaac Stone Fish, CEO of Strategy Risks, a consultancy focused on the risks of doing business in China. “The distinction is that [Apple CEO] Tim Cook is not on Twitter talking about how awful USAID is or meddling in European politics.”

Musk’s business interests in China and overall pro-Beijing attitudes also stand out among his new colleagues in the Trump administration. Trump’s foreign policy team is generally united in its hawkish views on China. Trump himself has accused Beijing in the past of a policy to “rape our country” and blamed it for the Covid pandemic, along with a host of other ills.

As the US and China appear to be hurtling headlong into a trade war, and even as Trump seeks a meeting with China’s Xi Jinping in hopes of hammering out a new trade deal, Musk’s ties to China — and the potential leverage they could offer Beijing in future negotiations — are getting more notice in both countries.

During the recent quasi-infomercial on the White House lawn, during which Trump purchased a Tesla and made a sales pitch for the slumping company, the president made clear that the profits of Musk’s companies will be a priority for the administration. This raises questions about whether the interests of those companies will come into play as the administration shapes its policies toward its fellow superpower.

China and Tesla need each other

The symbiotic relationship between Tesla and China almost can’t be overstated. In 2019, the company opened its Shanghai “gigafactory” with hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from Chinese banks. It was the company’s first factory outside the US, as well as the first wholly foreign-owned car company in China, where automakers typically enter into joint ventures with Chinese companies.

It is now Tesla’s largest factory, producing half of the company’s cars globally last year. Musk has praised workers at his........

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