Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter and Tesla, stood in the crosshairs of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) when he chipped in on the discussion on the origin of COVID-19 and brought attention to the theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese laboratory.
Musk’s Comments
The billionaire hopped on discussions on Twitter following the news, with some users accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), of funding gain-of-function research at the WIV before the virus began spreading in early 2020.“[Fauci] did it via a pass-through organization (EcoHealth),” Musk wrote in a reply, referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and former White House Chief Medical Advisor. Fauci’s NIAID sent $3.4 million in research grants via non-profit EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan laboratory.
“Even the famous Tesla boss Elon Musk has joined in,” the article reads. "Some may think [Musk] made those remarks only to attack Fauci, but the posts he reposted almost all linked the origins of COVID-19 to China. And the argument is repeatedly used by the hostile-to-China U.S. right-wing and anti-China media to frame China.”
‘Smashing China’s Wok’
The comments from the state-owned media are a signal that the Chinese regime is discontent with the billionaire’s remarks.The authoritarian regime keeps a close tab on Western businesses that operate in China and often has drastic reactions when it deems any entities to have stepped out of line. These reactions have included exerting pressure on companies to stick to the regime’s narrative or boycotting the companies altogether.
Notably, part of the comment by the Youth League is in almost identical wording to that posted by the Global Times on Tuesday, namely: “don’t expect to get fed by the Chinese and smash the Chinese wok at the same time.”
In Musk’s case, the Chinese regime’s Tuesday signal had a significant shift in tone from the last time Musk waded into Chinese politics.
In an interview with the Financial Times in October 2022, Musk said that he recommends a “special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable” and that such an “arrangement” between Taiwan and the Chinese regime could probably be “more lenient than Hong Kong.” That comment won support from Chinese propagandists who saw Musk’s remarks as supportive of the regime’s clear intentions to claim Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy, as its own territory.
The Epoch Times contacted Tesla for comment.