Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has (we hope jokingly) speculated on Twitter that he might be “partly Chinese.” The statement came in response to a tweet that included a side-by-side photo comparison of the tech billionaire and a Chinese Elon lookalike who has been affectionally dubbed ‘Yi Long Musk’ (pictured above).
The image of Musk and his Chinese doppelganger was posted beneath a tweet from Musk claiming that he will pay 11 billion USD in taxes this year.
Maybe I’m partly Chinese!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2021
Musk’s lookalike, who is allegedly based in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou, has been recently making the rounds on Chinese social media. On Douyin, China’s domestic version of TikTok, he has 15,000 followers and posts under the handle ‘马斯克小迷弟-中国分克,’ which roughly translates to ‘Musk’s fan — China’s version of Musk.’
He looks so similar to Time magazine’s 2021 Person of the Year that some have suggested the social media personality is the product of deep fake technology (something we’re on the fence about ourselves).
We’re unwilling to speculate on Musk’s ethnic heritage (something he seems entirely comfortable doing), but we do know that he holds South African, Canadian, and American citizenship. It’s also no secret that the billionaire has spent time in China, where Tesla operates a Gigafactory, and was once offered a Chinese ‘green card’ by the nation’s Premier Li Keqiang.
Most recently, Musk was in China-related news for tweeting the well-known Chinese poem “The Quatrain of Seven Steps,” a metaphorical work exploring the relationship between brothers, which led to considerable online speculation about his intended message.
Cover image: screengrab via Twitter
