A recent announcement by the Chinese government to ban all Tesla vehicles for at least two months from accessing Beidaihe has proven a major blow to Tesla. The announcement has been made over security concerns for the Chinese leadership meeting which is going to be held in Beidaihe. According to the authorities, Tesla contains cameras all around its vehicles, and it might be involved in spying activities in the country. The Chinese government has instructed all its employees to refrain from parking their Tesla cars on the premises of government property.
However, China and Tesla are on good terms with each other in terms of their executive relationship. The Chinese government even accepted a deal from Tesla and authorized it to own its car manufacturing factory in China without any joint venture. On the part of Elon Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, also acknowledges his good relations with the Chinese government and hasn’t become a subject of criticizing the Chinese government either.
But it is now clear from the current situation that the Chinese government cannot compromise on its security, and that is the reason Tesla cars have been banned for two months from entering a resort town in Beidaihe. Moreover, a notification regarding the prohibition of Tesla car parking near military bases, offices, and housing complexes was also issued last year by the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military.
China has doubts regarding the data as to where it is going after collection from the cameras. It might be used against the country’s scrutiny and the concern is logical. But Elon Musk has repeatedly assured the Chinese government by saying, “Tesla is not using its vehicles’ cameras to spy on China.” In addition to this, Tesla even declared that all the data would be reserved collectively in the locality of China.
To give it a practical nature, Tesla has reported that it will start manufacturing a new data center in China where the reserves of the data collected from the camera will be saved to assure the Chinese government about the safety of data. But this doesn’t make a difference when it has recently been announced that “Tesla cars will be prohibited from entering the Chinese coastal district of Beidaihe, site of a secretive annual summer party leadership conclave, for at least two months starting on July 1.”
To that end, Tesla is continuously making efforts to capture a large market share in China as it is the most important part of its plan. It has even started to double the manufacturing capacity at its Shanghai-based Gigafactory. Now let’s see how far Tesla will go despite the concerns.
