Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Tuesday took a jab at arch rival Elon Musk by raising the issue of whether China would gain leverage over Twitter after Musk's takeover of the social media platform in a $44 billion deal. 

Bezos, the world’s second richest man and owner of the Washington Post, released a series of tweets on Tuesday morning that highlighted the close ties Elon Musk's company shares with China.

Bezos retweeted New York Times reporter Mike Forsythe, who said that Tesla has a huge market in China for its cars and the company’s is dependent on Chinese suppliers for its EV batteries.

The reporter pointed out that China's ban on Twitter since 2009 had previously ensured the Chinese government had practically no control over the microblogging site, but that may have just changed as a result of the change in ownership.

Bezos responded to Forsyth's observation in his repost: "Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?"

Bezos' jab at Twitter being a town square was in response to Musk's saying soon after clinching the deal that "free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated."

However, Bezos at the same time also played safe on the issue as he said in another tweet: “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," Bezos added.

Also read: Musk clinches deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion; will Trump bounce back on social media?