Elon Musk has been warned by China after he referenced reports that Covid originated in a Chinese lab in Wuhan.
The Tesla founder weighed in on a stunning new revelation from the US Department of Energy, which said a lab leak could have been the cause of the global pandemic.
However, the body said it reached this conclusion with a 'low confidence.'
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He then responded to the groundless theory that former US chief medical adviser to the president Anthony Fauci manufactured Covid, saying: “He (Fauci) did it via a pass-through organisation (EcoHealth).”
This was enough to anger China's state-run mouthpiece the Global Times, which said the theory was a “conspiracy theory that slanders China.”
“At the same time, these remarks of his have been continuously used by those US right-wing and anti-China media hostile to China as material to frame China,” the publication said.
CNBC’s Eunice Yoon reported that the newspaper also said: “Elon Musk, are you breaking the pot of China?” A Chinese saying similar to biting the hand that feeds you, since Musk has huge business interests in China.
Though the China lab leak remains a theory, more and more fingers are being pointed towards China as having been responsible for the outbreak.
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Today (Wednesday, March 1), FBI chief Christopher Wray said the China lab leak was the 'most likely' explanation for the virus which Beijing dismissed as "political manipulation".
The US ambassador to China recently called for the country to "be more honest" about the origin of Covid, while China has been consistently criticised for being unhelpful in investigations into the outbreak.
Meanwhile, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning Mao said China had “shared the most data and research results on virus tracing and made important contributions to global virus tracing research”.
“Politicising the issue of virus tracing will not smear China but will only damage the US’s own credibility,” Mao said.
China is one of Tesla's biggest emerging markets, so Musk will be hoping his latest tweet controversy doesn't lead to the Chinese Communist Party clamping down on his business there.
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