Chinese author and outspoken government critic Murong Xuecun is worried about Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter.
The world's richest man has said he wants less-restrictive content moderation on the platform and styled himself a "free speech absolutist".
However, with Mr Musk having a vested interest in keeping Beijing onside, Murong fears the new Twitter boss might cooperate as the regime seeks to silence critical voices on the social media network.
Now that Twitter is a privately owned company, it is no longer subject to shareholder scrutiny nor is it accountable to anyone.
"Musk now holds Twitter and, given the fact that he has refrained from criticising them in the past, he may make some unspoken deal with the Chinese communist regime,” Murong said.
Even though Twitter is banned in China, there are still users in the country who manage to evade the "great firewall" and the platform is one of the few remaining arenas where Chinese citizens are able to to voice discontent.
Murong — who has been reprimanded by Chinese police for retweeting cartoons of President Xi Jinping — had about 8.5 million followers on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, before censors first shut down his account in May 2013.
He left China earlier this year to escape the repressive government and is now living in Australia.
"Twitter, if it turns out to be cooperating with the Chinese government, or if it becomes a powerful tool in the hands of the Chinese government, it will put activists like us in great danger," he said.
Musk's business interests in China
He-Ling Shi — an associate professor in the department of economics at Monash Business School — said Mr Musk's business interests in China were "significant".
One of Mr Musk's companies, Tesla, has a "gigafactory" in Shanghai and China is one of the electric vehicle manufacturer's biggest markets.
At nearly $US14 billion ($22 billion), Tesla China accounted for a quarter of the company's revenue in 2021.
"From a business perspective, to ensure that Tesla can survive relatively well in China, Musk knows very well that it is necessary to have good relations with the Chinese government,” Dr Shi said.
"As long as Tesla is in China, Musk will stand on the side of the Chinese government."
Badiucao — a Chinese Australian political cartoonist who goes by a pseudonym — told the ABC he shared Murong's concerns.
Also banned from Weibo a decade ago for posting caustic political cartoons lampooning the Chinese Communist Party online, Badiucao said Twitter gave him a platform to discuss global social issues.
He said Mr Musk's past positive comments about the Chinese government were concerning.
Mr Musk praised China's economic progress on the Communist Party's 100th anniversary, and once penned an article for a magazine run by China's censorship agency.
Last month, Mr Musk suggested Taiwan could become a "special administrative region" of China.
"I've become extremely concerned about how much free speech that we will still have [on Twitter] when we try to criticise the Chinese government,” Badiucao said.
“Privacy can be compromised if the Chinese government requires Elon Musk, or Twitter, to hand over certain data.
"And, of course, because of this conflicting interest, we just do not know if Musk would stand his ground and protect us."
Neither Mr Musk nor Twitter responded to the ABC's request for comment.
Influence likely to be more subtle
Darren Linvill — an associate professor from the Clemson University's media forensics hub — said no-one could know whether Mr Musk was being pressured by China, but he said "the influence is already there".
"A lot of decision-making could happen without an overt question being asked," he said.
However, he said, he did not believe Mr Musk would take a direct approach in favouring China.
"Like giving China information, it's very hard to keep these sorts of things secret in a corporate environment," Dr Linvill said.
"If it is discovered, the downside is great."
One of Mr Musk's stated goals was to eliminate spam bots from Twitter, which would actually be contrary to China's aims, Dr Linvill said.
"China spits out more troll accounts on Twitter than any other nation-state," he said.
Dr Linvill said that, if Mr Musk was going to make decisions that favoured Beijing's aims, they would be more subtle.
"He can make a lot of decisions that are going to make it more difficult for the platform to moderate Chinese government content," Dr Linvill explained.
For example, he said, removing labels on tweets that identified them as coming from state-affiliated accounts would make it easier for Beijing to spread propaganda.
"The Chinese form of disinformation is more about suppressing conversations by taking over hashtags and flooding the zones," he said.
"For instance, if you were to go and search about the cotton industry in Xinjiang, you're much more likely to stumble across the Chinese official party line than any objectively truthful information."
After Mr Musk first revealed he had offered to buy Twitter in April, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos tweeted that the question of whether the Chinese government had gained "a bit of leverage over the town square" was an interesting one.
Mr Bezos's answer was "probably not".
"The more likely outcome in this regard is complexity in China for Tesla, rather than censorship at Twitter," he said.
Patrik Wikstrom — the director of Queensland University of Technology's digital media research centre — said Mr Musk already appeared to be trying to distance himself from content moderation.
One of the first major initiatives Mr Musk revealed was a "content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints".
"I don't see that this would have anything to impact on the level of critique that we see on Twitter against China," Professor Wikstrom said.
However, he said, Mr Musk had shown a naive understanding of Twitter.
"It looks like he is trying to address the problems with Twitter from an engineering point of view, like how to build electric cars, or how to get a rocket up into space," he said.
"It is not a technical problem. It is a social and political problem."
