Chinese Military Think Tank Recommends CCP Target Musk to Influence Trump, Insider Says

A Chinese military think tank is recommending that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership strengthen economic and emotional bonds with tech billionaire Elon Musk to influence President-elect Donald Trump on how to respond to the Taiwan issue, according to insider information obtained by Yuan Hongbing, a former law professor at Peking University and a renowned Chinese dissident living in exile in Australia.
According to Yuan’s source within the CCP, whom The Epoch Times did not speak with directly because of security concerns, vice chairman of the CCP’s Central Military Commission Zhang Youxia convened nine of China’s top geopolitical experts and military strategists from the People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to author a new report from a Chinese military think tank on the likely effect of the 2024 U.S. election on geopolitics.
Yuan, who viewed the report, said it outlined recommendations for the Party leadership on how to handle U.S.–China relations, and correctly predicted that Trump would be returning to the White House.
One of the strategic recommendations involved Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the owner of social media platform X.
“This think tank has advised the Xi Jinping administration to focus the CCP’s United Front to work on targeting Elon Musk and his family members, especially his mother,” Yuan told The Epoch Times.
The United Front coordinates thousands of groups to carry out foreign political influence operations, suppress dissident voices and activities, gather intelligence, and facilitate the transfer of technology to China. Ultimately, the CCP uses the United Front to advance its economic, political, and security interests worldwide.
In December 2023, Xi met with Chinese diplomatic envoys in Beijing and told them they must “make good use of the effective instrument of United Front work,” according to Chinese state-run media.
Yuan said he believes the think tank’s strategy of influencing Trump through Musk is unlikely to be effective.
“It’s a low-probability event,” he told The Epoch Times. “Trump’s national aspirations and the CCP’s authoritarian strategy are fundamentally incompatible.”
He added that the administration team appointed by Trump is composed of politicians with a clear understanding of the CCP’s oppressive regime.
“Trump is a terminator of appeasement policies toward the CCP’s authoritarianism,” he said.
Yuan said he hopes that Musk and his family members will stick to their consciences if they are approached by CCP personnel.
“CCP’s totalitarian regime is the enemy of the free, democratic world and the greatest adversary of the United States,” Yuan said. “It’s hoped that entrepreneurs will stand on the side of freedom and democracy at this critical moment in history.”
The report also made several other recommendations to Xi, such as increasing military and economic aid to Russia, fracturing America’s various alliances on a global scale, and strengthening political relations with Middle Eastern powers that resist the United States.
While some China experts believe that if the United States escalates its countermeasures against the CCP, Xi Jinping will retreat on issues such as Taiwan and the South China Sea, Yuan himself holds that this view “contradicts the fundamental political logic of the tyrannical CCP regime.”
“Xi Jinping is currently facing an extremely dire situation, both domestically and internationally,” he told The Epoch Times. “He has no room to retreat.
“In this context, Xi Jinping’s only possible way out—or the way he perceives it—would be to initiate a war over Taiwan to fully counter the pressure from the United States.
“If he abandons his strategic response, the CCP will be in a completely passive position in its geopolitical struggle with the United States.”
According to Yuan, “this passive state could lead to a complete collapse of the CCP” because of domestic discontent.
The law professor, who has been analyzing China affairs for years, predicts that based on the political record of the incoming U.S. administration, a direct confrontation between Trump and Xi is inevitable.
“[The administration] will certainly hold the CCP accountable for the harm caused to the international community and humanity over the years,” he said. “The investigation into the Wuhan virus is an integral part of the overall U.S. strategic deployment.”
“The only force that can stop this is the global expansion of [the] CCP’s tyranny, the authoritarian expansion strategy that Xi Jinping’s regime is currently executing,” he said.
“This means that for Trump to achieve his political vision of making America great again, he must completely defeat Xi Jinping’s global expansion strategy of communist authoritarianism.
“Therefore, the conflict between the U.S. and China has become inevitable.”