Bezos asks if China has gained ‘leverage’ following Musk’s buyout of Twitter

On Tuesday, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos asked to his many followers in a tweet whether the Chinese government has gained “a bit of leverage” after Elon Musk purchased the social media platform.

The day prior, Twitter’s board agreed to sell the company to Musk for around $44 billion, which means Musk paid roughly $54 per share for the San Francisco-based corporation. 

Twitter wrote in a statement that the deal between Musk and the company had “been unanimously approved by the Twitter board of directors,” and that the move will be closed in 2022 as long as it is approved by the corporation’s shareholders.

“The Twitter board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing,” wrote Bret Taylor, who serves as Twitter’s independent board chair.

After the announcement, Blue Origin founder and chief Jeff Bezos sent a series of tweets on Tuesday, bringing attention to the tight ties between Musk’s electric vehicle manufacturing company, called Tesla, and China.

Bezos shared tweets by New York Times reporter Mike Forsythe, and he highlighted Tesla’s large market in China and Tesla’s reliance on Chinese suppliers for its lithium-ion batteries. “Tesla’s second-biggest market in 2021 was China (after the US). Chinese battery makers are major suppliers for Tesla’s EVs,” Forsythe tweeted. 

Bezos added in a retweet of Forsythe’s note, “Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?”

He went on to add, “My own answer to this question is probably not. The more likely outcome in this regard is complexity in China for Tesla, rather than censorship at Twitter. But we’ll see. Musk is extremely good at navigating this kind of complexity.”

Musk noted after the Twitter buyout that he holds the belief that the site should be a platform for free speech.