Not really a surprise.
https://www.ft.com/content/66857e1e-a217-4ddd-8332-d9f0f75aa459Chinese investors privately take stakes in Elon Musk’s companiesAsset managers have been promoting tech mogul’s ties to Donald Trump to lure capital to xAI, Neuralink and SpaceXWealthy Chinese investors are quietly funnelling tens of millions of dollars into private companies controlled by Elon Musk using an arrangement that shields their identities from public view, according to asset managers and investors involved in the transactions. Since Musk was named a key figure in US President Donald Trump’s drive to remake the US government, China-based asset managers have been promoting the pair’s relationship as an enticement to raise capital from rich Chinese. The money is flowing into Musk’s non-public ventures including xAI, Neuralink and SpaceX, the world’s most valuable private company.
The investments are being placed through opaque structures known as special-purpose vehicles, which have the benefit of concealing the investors’ identities, to avoid the ire of US authorities and companies wary of Chinese capital during a nadir in relations between the two countries. Asset managers behind the deals have told investors that the entities are specifically designed to avoid disclosure.
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“How can someone in Musk’s position have so many connections to China but still be a good person to reform the US government?” said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The influx of Chinese money into Musk’s business empire “adds to this picture that he is more interested in his reputation and his brand in China than he is in American interests”. The opaque nature of the structures makes it difficult to assess the full scale of Chinese capital flowing into Musk’s private ventures. But three Chinese-backed asset managers told the Financial Times that over the past two years, they had sold Chinese investors more than $30mn worth of shares in SpaceX, xAI and Neuralink, three Musk-controlled private technology companies whose valuations have surged.
It makes perfect sense for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to bribe the South African neo-nazi to destroy the American government. That way, when China eventually invades Taiwan, the US Government will not be capable of implementing an effective response. Even if someone else is President by then, the damage will be too large to quickly repair. American will be hobbled for many years, without an effective government capable of countering the influence of hostile foreign powers.
By means of this bribery of President Musk and other corrupt Republican officials, the CCP can secure China's unchallenged rise to become the world's sole superpower.
Of course, compucomp will soon be along to say that it is all just "private" investors, but in reality we know that Xi Jinping can direct it's "private" citizens to do what he wants. And that's the beauty of using opaque financial mechanisms without disclosure to implement the bribery. And I would assume Russian oligarchs are doing the same thing - just more "private" investment decisions.
