Taiwan foreign minister issued a firm response to recent comments of Elon Musk about Taiwan, firmly stating that the island is “not for sale.” The entrepreneur Musk, who founded X (formerly Twitter), Tesla, and the Starlink satellite network, addressed the sensitive topic of relations between Beijing and Taipei during his appearance at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles. This appearance was uploaded to YouTube this week.
Elon Musk remarked, “Beijing’s policy has been to reunite Taiwan with China. From their perspective, one might view it as akin to Hawaii, an integral part of China that international recognition does not consider part of China primarily because… the US Pacific Fleet has deterred reunification efforts through force.”
In response, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister, Joseph Wu, took to X to express his hope that Musk could advocate for China to “open X to its people.” Notably, China restricts access to X, as well as other major Western social media platforms like Facebook. Wu made a pointed reference to Musk’s decision last year to deny a Ukrainian request for the activation of his Starlink satellite network in Crimea’s Sevastopol. The intention behind this activation was to provide support to Ukraine in its efforts against the Russian fleet in that specific region.
Wu emphasized, “Listen carefully, Taiwan is not part of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and is certainly not available for purchase.”
Taiwan’s democratically elected government vehemently rejects China’s sovereignty claims and asserts that the determination of Taiwan’s future should be in the hands of its people.
This is not the first instance of Musk stirring controversy regarding Taiwan. In October last year, he proposed resolving tensions between China and Taiwan by considering the idea of ceding some control of Taiwan to Beijing. Taiwan responded to this proposal with a similarly strong rebuke.