Jeff Bezos Suggests China Might Lean on Elon Musk to Get ‘Leverage Over’ Twitter

Twitter’s board of directors agreed to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company on Monday at $54.20 a share. The deal is expected to close later this year.

Shortly after the vote, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos retweeted a post by New York Times reporter Mike Forsythe, who was formerly based in the paper’s Hong Kong office.

Forsythe noted that China, which is banned Twitter, is Tesla’s second largest market and that Chinese battery companies are big suppliers for Tesla’s electric vehicles.

Apropos of something:
-Tesla’s second-biggest market in 2021 was China (after the US)
-Chinese battery makers are major suppliers for Tesla’s EVs.
-After 2009, when China banned Twitter, the government there had almost no leverage over the platform
-That may have just changed

— Mike Forsythe 傅才德 (@PekingMike) April 25, 2022

Tesla also operates a factory in Shanghai, which the company maintains by the graces of the Chinese Communist Party. Last year, Musk praised China’s “economic prosperity” on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CCP.

Bezos retweeted Forsythe and stated, “Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?”

Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square? https://t.co/jTiEnabP6T

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 25, 2022

Musk and Bezos are the world’s richest and second richest persons, respectively. Each man has his own aeronautics company. Musk runs SpaceX while Bezos heads Blue Origin. Last year, SpaceX won a $2.9 billion NASA contract to conduct two manned missions to the moon. Bezos appealed the decision in court and lost.

During the legal challenge, Musk said that “you cannot sue your way to the moon.” He also tweeted that Bezos and Blue Origin “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol”.