I know that it’s Chinese and it translates roughly as “white/Western left.” Looking it up on the Chinese wiki, Google translate gives me… well, this:

It is used to describe people who support policies such as the abolition of the death penalty , [ 3 ] animal protection , environmental protection , body equality , skin equality , LGBT , feminism , vegetarianism , marijuana decriminalization , euthanasia , abortion and immigration , that is, people with cultural leftist ideas in the European and American world.

This paints baizuo as something akin to American conservative terms like “woke” or “SJW.” On the other hand, I’ve seen baizuo on Hexbear a few times, but in those contexts it seemed to mean something closer to “succdem” or “Western chauvinist” rather than the definition above. Obviously, a term used to insult feminists, LGBT people, and environmentalists would be incredibly out of place on this site, hence why I’m asking about it rather than taking a machine-translated Wiki article at face value.

  • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    17·
    11 hours ago

    I mean, Tesla is still the best selling pure EV in China (~500k sold from Q1-3 so far, a comparable number to the US) but it might get overtaken by BYD soon (and already massively outcompeted if you take into account the lower priced hybrids). There really is a weird obsession with Elon Musk that I cannot explain lol.

    And this makes the whole DOGE cost cutting thing even more absurd because if the US goes into recession, the demand for Teslas in both countries will certainly plunge, and Elon would have effectively killed his own business. Would have been funny if not for the fact that millions of people will also lose their jobs because they let this idiot dictate the fiscal policy.

    • mamotromico@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      59 minutes ago

      I was unaware, thanks for the insight! I thought domestic EVs were already bigger in China.

      • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        1·
        32 minutes ago

        They are already much bigger in China, especially in the hybrid category.

        Teslas are battery-only EVs, and they sell only mid-sized sedans/crossovers (Model 3 and Y), and Chinese EVs have many more brands and sizes and models. The BYD Seagull (a compact battery-only EV), for example, is almost overtaking the Teslas in terms of sales, but it’s in a different size category and much much cheaper.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      9 hours ago

      And this makes the whole DOGE cost cutting thing even more absurd because if the US goes into recession, the demand for Teslas in both countries will certainly plunge, and Elon would have effectively killed his own business. Would have been funny if not for the fact that millions of people will also lose their jobs because they let this idiot dictate the fiscal policy.

      Elon won’t be dictating policy, he’ll be dictating who in government gets purged. The job he’s angling for is to be the one to determine who goes and who stays.

      He’ll determine who survives to dictate policy.

      You know how when a company wants to save money and it sacks 60% of the workforce? That’s what Musk wants to be in charge of doing to the US government and all of its agencies.