China warns Elon Musk after comments about COVID labs

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By Bradford Betz, Fox Business

March 1, 2023 | 1:43 am

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

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

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

The original tweet, from the “Kanekoa The Great” account, 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 conducted “gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab.”

“He did it through a conduit organization (EcoHealth),” Musk replied, referring to the nonprofit that received nearly $8 million in federal research grants to study bat coronaviruses in China.

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

As noted by the outlet, the electric vehicle maker maintains 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 originated in the Wuhan lab, according to the classified intelligence report cited by the Wall Street Journal.

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