China warns Elon Musk after comments about COVID lab leaks

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By Bradford Betz, Fox Business

March 1, 2023 | 01:43

China is warning Twitter CEO Elon Musk against sharing posts promoting the lab leak theory about the coronavirus, suggesting such comments could damage Tesla’s relationship with the company’s second-largest market.

The cryptic warning came on a social media post by the state-run Global Times newspaper.

The author was responding to Musk commenting on a tweet that mentioned the Department of Energy’s conclusion that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The original tweet, from the account “Kanekoa The Great,” questioned whether Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was involved in the development of COVID-19 because he had funded “benefit-of-function research by The Wuhan laboratory.”

“He did it via a review organization (EcoHealth),” Musk replied, referring to the nonprofit group that was awarded nearly $8 million in federal research grants to study the bat coronavirus in China.

The Global Times warned Musk that he could “break the pot to China.” The saying is similar to the phrase “biting the hand that feeds you,” according to CNBC’s Eunice Yoon, who first reported the warning.

As noted by the outlet, the electric car maker has a factory campus in Shanghai – China is the company’s second largest market.

FOX Business has reached out to Musk and Tesla for comment.

The Department of Energy recently concluded that COVID-19 most likely came from the Wuhan laboratory, according to the classified intelligence report cited by the Wall Street Journal.

The so-called laboratory leak theory was widely dismissed as a conspiracy or “fringe theory”. It was labeled “misinformation” by Democrats and major news outlets, and social media companies in the early stages of the pandemic suppressed the theory from being circulated.