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Tesla is not happy that a Chinese media group decidedly printed some slanderous material regarding their gigafactory.

The article itself originated from Pingwest. And the publication itself, would describe their content as the stories of “China’s tech evolution, beyond the headlines.” Well, lately, they’ve seemed to taken a liking to give Americans a negative image. Not sure why, but maybe it’s just in particular to how Tesla has treated the local workers.

The article itself is titled a doozy of a length. “Giga-Sweatshop Meets Corporate Overlords: an Exclusive Look Into How Tesla China Runs its Shanghai Gigafactory 3.”

In it, you can see that they use a variety of claims to prove Tesla is fronting their car factory in order to perpetuate terrible working conditions and dubious sales tactics. A lot of those claims, obviously, seem to be rooted in fiction. This is due to several sources having no names. And the ones that do are a little flimsy at best to evolve into scandal.

An excerpt:

Back in his last gig, Liu recalls, superiors would bring workers snacks and say nice things like “everybody did a good job today” to them, while senior engineers would even cook dumplings and share them with juniors. Tesla’s Shanghai factory doesn’t have dumplings. It doesn’t even have snacks made available to workers. There was, however, extra boxed meals for employees who work shifts after 8:30PM, which soon downgraded to instant noodle, and eventually packaged bread that was easy to store. 

The article goes on to call out Tom Zhu, an executive at Tesla, who reportedly is the worst. He insults employees, disavows them from working at home, and just is sought out to be a migraine in human form. How tragic! How insulting! What would Tesla do?

Tesla Would – And Is Trying To – Sue

CEO Elon Musk has a haphazard history of picking a bone with the media. Yet in this case, the consequences of letting this piece run officially are very severe. So much so, in fact, that Tesla is taking Pingwest to court. Pingwest has to submit proof of their content being valid before February 8th. Tesla, while sending in an affidavit, hasn’t actually commented on this.