Twitter Free Speech or Tesla Interests? Why China Question Will Be a Headache for Elon Musk

Monday was a day of epic meltdown for activists and influencers, mainly belonging to the Left-wing of the political spectrum, as Twitter’s board announced that it is planning to sell out to Elon Musk, co-founder and CEO of Tesla, for $44 billion. Twitter, a public listed company, has a current market capitalisation of an estimated $37.9 billion, and the day is not far when it will be a private company entirely owned by the wealthiest person in the world.

Musk is right when it comes to unwanted censorship by Twitter, which disrupted the public discourse and exposed people to only one side of the argument. Though, after the announcement of Twitter’s sell-out, some quarters have raised questions against this takeover — and one of those questions came from another billionaire, Jeff Bezos.

Bezos took to Twitter to ask, “Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?” Bezos himself answered that, “My own answer to this question is probably not.” “The more likely outcome,” he wrote, “in this regard is complexity in China for Tesla, rather than censorship at Twitter.”

While the main motive behind such a question may be attributed to the tussle between the two billionaires but the question is intriguing and needs exploration.

China, a Communist republic that relies on a lot of propaganda, has been often found manipulating social media algorithms to push its narratives aggressively. Not surprisingly, these platforms are banned in the country for ordinary people.

Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom, who stepped down in 2021, proactively pushed the Chinese narrative on Twitter during the pandemic, attracting thousands of retweets. However, it was found later that half of the accounts used for these retweets were performing a coordinated activity, which can be attributed to platform manipulation. An investigation by the Associated Press and the Oxford Internet Institute “identified 26,879 accounts that managed to retweet Chinese diplomats or state media nearly 200,000 times before getting suspended.”

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There is also evidence that China used techniques like fake accounts, imitation, and automated bots during the Hong Kong protests in 2019 — and the army built for this purpose was unleashed during the coronavirus pandemic to declare the Chinese Communist Party sacrosanct.

In May 2021, the Shanghai Police department invited private contractors to manage perception on social media platforms. These suppliers should do several tasks, including increasing the number of fans of the Chinese officials and promoting their message. They should also provide various premium accounts — accounts that may last over a long period — to amplify the message. In addition, they should also be experts in working on how to unsuspend accounts in a fixed time. This is systematic warfare by the Chinese state against the world.

Coming to Elon Musk, he has significant business interests in China that are not ignorable. After the US of America, China is the largest market for electric cars made by Tesla. The company has an assembling plant in Shanghai that can assemble 250,000 cars a year. Also, Tesla’s battery supplier CATL has lithium-ion battery plant in China. China does have a history of arm-twisting companies to serve political purposes.

With this background and Musk’s commitment to the absolute freedom of speech, it remains to be seen how the question of China is being handled because harsh actions on them may have adverse repercussions on Musk’s business. Musk’s new ideas look promising though the Chinese question would remain a headache for him.

Harshil Mehta is an analyst who writes on international relations, diplomacy and national issues. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.

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