Taiwan slammed business tycoon Elon Musk for his comments stating that the self-governing island was an integral part of China.
Musk’s Comments
Speaking at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles this week, Musk — the billionaire owner of the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) — said that Beijing’s “policy has been to reunite Taiwan with China.”
“From their standpoint, maybe it is analogous to Hawaii or something like that, like an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China mostly because … the US Pacific Fleet has stopped any sort of reunification effort by force,” he said.
Taiwanese Response
Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu responded to the comments in a post on X late Wednesday, saying that he hoped Musk could ask China to “open @X to its people,” as the Asian superpower restricts X, along with other major western social media like Facebook.
Hope @elonmusk can also ask the #CCP to open @X to its people. Perhaps he thinks banning it is a good policy, like turning off @Starlink to thwart #Ukraine’s counterstrike against #Russia. Listen up, #Taiwan is not part of the #PRC & certainly not for sale! JW https://t.co/HEhyTYYXFp
— 外交部 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC (Taiwan) 🇹🇼 (@MOFA_Taiwan) September 13, 2023
“Perhaps he thinks banning it is a good policy, like turning off @Starlink to thwart Ukraine’s counterstrike against Russia,” the diplomat added.
Wu’s comment was a reference to Musk refusing Ukraine’s request to activate his Starlink satellite network in Crimea’s port city of Sevastopol last year to aid an attack on Russia’s fleet there.
“Listen up, Taiwan is not part of the [China] & certainly not for sale!” Wu asserted.
Musk and Taiwan
This is not the business magnate’s first run-in with Taiwanese authorities.
Last October, Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng announced that the island’s military would no longer buy any Tesla vehicles, after Musk, the company’s CEO, suggested that Taiwan should become a special administrative zone like Hong Kong in order to resolve its conflict with China.
Chiu’s decision came after Musk said in an interview with Financial Times that his “recommendation” for the Taiwan issue “would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable.”
Premier Su Tseng-chang retorted that Musk “doesn’t know much” about the island or cross-strait relations and speculated that his comments were aimed at pacifying China, which accounts for 30-50% of Tesla’s production.