SCMP讨论特斯拉与SpaceX潜在合并的地缘政治障碍，未披露已确认交易进展

One by one, Tesla Model Y Ls roll out of the company’s end-of-line inspection bays, gleaming in black, white and gold. They are a mix of left-hand and right-hand drive – one of many signs the electric vehicles (EVs) produced here are destined for ports around the world. The company touts a total assembly time of less than 40 seconds at its sprawling Gigafactory in Lingang, a coastal area on the far southeastern edge of Shanghai. From there, Tesla says, a finished car can reach the port and be loaded onto a ship within an hour. In July, one roll-on/roll-off vessel carried 7,738 Teslas out of Shanghai, marking an all-time record for a single shipment of finished vehicles from a Chinese port. The factory delivered 93,579 vehicles that month. As of July, more than half of the cars made there were exported overseas this year. But because of its location, this highly efficient manufacturing powerhouse could present a vulnerability in Washington for Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose sprawling empire spans EVs, autonomous driving, rockets, satellite internet, humanoid robots, artificial intelligence and brain-computer interfaces. While his EV business relies heavily on China’s supply chain to fulfil global demand, Musk’s commercial aerospace company SpaceX has become a core national security contractor for the Pentagon. That poses a dilemma for the CEO, as he looks to navigate the geopolitical waters between the world’s two biggest economies. Musk must perform a balancing act between the competing interests, which would require a complicated, ring-fenced strategy for his China operations to satisfy regulators in both Washington and Beijing, according to industry observers. “Musk is not yet choosing between the United States and China. He is trying to establish a balance between several tracks of [his] offerings,” said Marina Yue Zhang, associate professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). “But the danger to maintain this balance lies in an uncertain geopolitical landscape.” The challenge could intensify if Musk were to bring his businesses closer together. Tesla and SpaceX are increasingly going to be suppliers to one another Seth Goldstein, Morningstar Currently, Wall Street is abuzz about a possible merger between SpaceX, whose close ties to the US government and Pentagon heighten national-security sensitivities, and Tesla, due to an ever deeper technology overlap between the two firms, from AI to robotics. While Musk has not commented on a merger, the usually outspoken tech mogul has also not publicly denied the speculation. “Tesla and SpaceX are increasingly going to be suppliers to one another,” said Seth Goldstein, senior equity analyst at Morningstar. Tesla supplies solar panels, batteries and potentially cargo casings for SpaceX’s Starship launch vehicle, while SpaceX provides its Grok AI model and Starlink satellite internet for Tesla’s cars and potentially its humanoid robot Optimus, according to Goldstein. The merger would make “operational sense” as it would allow Musk to transfer engineering talent between Tesla and SpaceX projects more smoothly without triggering corporate compliance concerns, Goldstein said. Tesla’s China footprint could complicate such a move, with a merger raising concerns on both sides of the Pacific: Washington’s wariness towards a core partner maintaining a major manufacturing base in China, as well as Beijing’s misgivings about allowing a US defence contractor to operate within its borders. The concerns sparked speculation that Musk may be forced to decouple from China. A Wall Street Journal report in late July, citing unidentified sources, said Tesla had been instructed to separate its China business to pave the way for a potential merger with SpaceX. However, Musk was quick to dismiss it as “absurdly fake news”. “This has never even come up in a discussion ever,” Musk said on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter. Tesla and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the subject. Can Tesla do without China? At stake is Tesla’s sprawling Shanghai manufacturing ecosystem, which accounted for over half of the company’s total global EV deliveries in 2025. Lingang does not just host the Gigafactory, China’s first wholly foreign-owned car plant. It also has the still-expanding Megafactory, Tesla’s energy-storage manufacturing plant, as well as a dense network of Chinese suppliers capable of meeting the company’s standards on cost, quality and scale. Nearby are plants operated by – among others – automotive supplier Joyson Electronics, which provides Tesla with steering wheels and airbags; battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL) and Faway Dongyang, a producer of car bumpers. Inside Tesla’s own factory, crates bearing the names of Chinese suppliers such as Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls, Suzhou Current Power Technology, Lingyun Industrial and Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing can be seen along the production line. Many are based within the manufacturing belt that stretches across the country’s east coast, through Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Tesla says more than 95 per cent of the parts used at its Shanghai factory are locally sourced. It works with more than 400 Chinese suppliers, more than 60 of which have gone on to enter Tesla’s global supply chain. China is critical to Tesla in three interconnected ways: scale, cost efficiency and speed of innovation, said Zhang of UTS. “Shanghai is not simply an inexpensive assembly base. It sits inside an unusually dense network of battery, electronics, casting, motor, tooling and automation suppliers,” she said. “That proximity allows Tesla to alter designs, resolve manufacturing problems and scale production much faster than it could through a dispersed supply chain.” Divesting China “would impair Tesla’s production volume, cost structure and manufacturing-learning loop”, Zhang added. Musk himself was once a frequent visitor to Shanghai. Over a roughly 18-month span between 2018 and 2020, he met Li Qiang – then Shanghai’s Communist Party chief, and now China’s premier – four times, according to a city government account. Musk returned to Shanghai in 2023. His later public visits to China in 2024 and 2026 were centred largely on Beijing. Most recently, he joined US President Donald Trump’s entourage for a state visit to China’s capital in May. Over those years, Musk’s role changed within China and globally. With the establishment of the Shanghai facility, he became one of the country’s most important foreign manufacturing investors. And in the years since his purchase of Twitter, he has accrued immense influence over public discourse and geopolitics, especially in the world’s two largest economies. The more effective the firewall, the fewer merger synergies can safely be realised Marina Yue Zhang, University of Technology Sydney Between Washington and Beijing Musk’s geopolitical calculus now must include the stringent obligations for SpaceX that come with being a US military contractor. Among the multibillion-dollar agreements the company has made are a US$4.16 billion deal for satellites designed to track airborne missiles, and a US$2.29 billion contract to build a space-based network for satellite communications, both signed with the Space Force of the US Department of Defence in May. Contracts from the US government accounted for around 20 per cent of SpaceX’s total revenues in 2025, the company said in its prospectus. The relationship between SpaceX and the US government is perceived as symbiotic, with each side reliant on the other. Musk said his company had become a “vital element” of the country’s national defence in June. But Zhang said Washington would expect significant compartmentalisation in Musk’s China business. “[The US] may tolerate civilian Tesla manufacturing in China under the same ultimate holding company, but only if that activity is demonstrably isolated from classified programmes, military-relevant AI, controlled technical data and sensitive defence supply chains”. Questions will also be raised from the Beijing side, although China values Tesla as a flagship foreign investment, she said, adding that China could require a ring-fenced Chinese subsidiary or restrictions on data, algorithm and technical access to maintain leverage over the EV maker’s local operations. How Musk plans to navigate between Washington and Beijing will be “the real bottleneck” in a potential merger, according to Zhang. “The commercial case is relatively easy to articulate. The harder question is whether those synergies can be realised without creating unacceptable channels between an American defence contractor and Tesla’s Chinese operations.” She said the CEO would need to “construct an exceptionally clear institutional firewall”, but added this could create a paradox: “the more effective the firewall, the fewer merger synergies can safely be realised.” Tesla lays the first bricks Tesla could be taking early steps to build such a firewall within its production network. A former engineer who worked on battery development for the company said the firm had, years ago, launched an internal effort aimed at building a supply chain that was less dependent on China. It was, in practice, “almost an impossible task,” the engineer said, speaking on condition of anonymity, because Chinese companies were present at almost every layer of the industry. Tesla did ask some suppliers to build production capacity outside China in this effort, the former engineer said. CATL was among the companies that were approached, but the battery maker shelved its direct investment plan in the US in 2022 as geopolitical tension mounted. Japan’s Panasonic and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution, however, have deepened their ties with Tesla in the US market. Still, the former engineer cautioned against reading every effort to diversify production through a geopolitical lens. Hardware companies routinely build parallel supply chains, the engineer said, often for more pragmatic reasons: cost, efficiency and resilience. “A patchwork of regulations and economic incentives has increasingly pushed companies such as Tesla to build a more ‘China-free’ supply chain, or scrutinise suppliers much more closely, sometimes several tiers down,” said Leah Yu, a partner at Jincheng Tongda & Neal Law Firm. Sources of pressure included import restrictions linked to forced labour, national security rules covering connected vehicles, tariffs and tax incentives favouring US-made batteries and components, Yu said. SpaceX faced a harder technology firewall, she added, as export controls were layered on top of supplier-security requirements associated with its aerospace and national security work. These controls could restrict not only sourcing, but also which suppliers and personnel were allowed access to the necessary technology. Goldstein of Morningstar said that ring-fencing Tesla’s Chinese EV and battery operations could address the demands of both governments. However, to allow a merger to proceed, regulatory authorities in both the US and China might still demand that Tesla sells off its Chinese operations or move to a non-controlling stake. While a China divestment could hurt Tesla’s cost efficiency, the EV maker traditionally competes on its autonomous driving technology as a differentiator rather than price, Goldstein said. Gearing up for the ‘biggest product ever’ However, even compared with EVs, China could prove more indispensable for the production of Optimus, which Musk has called “the biggest product ever”. “So far, the largest reliance on China is likely the rare earth metals used to produce magnets for motors that are required for every joint in a humanoid robot,” Goldstein said. “Tesla will likely try to source rare earth metals from suppliers outside China, but this may be difficult as China controls the vast majority of supply today.” Musk addressed the rare earth issue in April, admitting that Beijing’s restrictions on exports of the critical minerals affected the production of Optimus. “We’re working through that with China,” Musk told investors in an earnings call. A continued grip on rare earth elements – and the crucial magnets made with them – could hurt Musk’s ambitions for the humanoid robot, which he projected to be a US$10 trillion sales generator. Beyond rare earth magnets, Optimus remains heavily reliant on China’s supply chain, even with its primary manufacturing rooted in the US. “There is an overlap in key‑component supply chains between Optimus and Tesla EVs, and Tesla leverages existing Chinese partners to co-develop and produce joint modules, dexterous hands and other key parts,” said Ethan Qi, associate director at Counterpoint Research. Tier-one suppliers including Tuopu Group, Zhejiang Sanhua, Xusheng Group and Glory Mica are veterans in Tesla’s EV value chain with years of proven partnerships, according to Qi. “They fully back Optimus V3’s mass production plan,” he said. Amid geopolitical uncertainties, these Chinese partners would willingly relocate or expand their capacity beyond China to mitigate the impacts of tariffs, as they anticipate strong sales prospects from Optimus, Qi added. These delicate and complex adjustments could move fast. Ark Investment Management’s chief futurist Brett Winton said he expected a SpaceX and Tesla combination to be announced before the end of 2026. Tesla’s China operations could pose a “smallish wrinkle” in a potential merger with SpaceX, a major US defence contractor, but it was not necessarily “a stumbling block”, Winton said in a video podcast posted on X on August 11. “The fact that Tesla owns its own factory there is really an anomaly … and an underestimated testament to Elon Musk’s ability to navigate political choppiness in different ways,” Winton said. Rather than addressing the questions raised by the podcast directly, Musk responded on X with an endorsement that has become commonplace for the CEO. “China is awesome. I strongly encourage people to visit.”