‘Not for sale’: Taiwan blasts Musk as he calls island nation ‘integral part of China’

Taiwan is “not for sale”, the island’s overseas minister stated in a stern rebuke to Elon Musk who asserted Taiwan was an integral a part of China, because the billionaire once more waded into the thorny difficulty of relations between Beijing and Taipei.

Musk, the proprietor of the social media platform X previously often called Twitter, in addition to the Tesla electrical automotive firm and Starlink satellite tv for pc community, made the feedback to the All-In Summit in Los Angeles uploaded to YouTube this week.

“Their (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 stated.

Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, in a put up on X late Wednesday, responded that he hoped Musk might ask China to “open @X to its people”. China blocks X, together with different main Western social media like Facebook.

“Perhaps he thinks banning it is a good policy, like turning off @Starlink to thwart Ukraine’s counterstrike against Russia,” Wu added, referring to Musk’s refusing a Ukrainian request to activate his Starlink satellite tv for pc community in Crimea’s port metropolis of Sevastopol final yr to help an assault on Russia’s fleet there.

“Listen up, Taiwan is not part of the PRC & certainly not for sale!” Wu stated, utilizing the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

Taiwan’s democratically elected authorities strongly rejects China’s sovereignty claims, and says solely Taiwan’s folks can resolve their future.

This isn’t the primary time Musk, whose Tesla had a big manufacturing unit in Shanghai, has riled Taiwan.

Last October, he urged that tensions between China and Taiwan might be resolved by handing over some management of Taiwan to Beijing, drawing a equally robust reprimand from Taiwan.

Edited By:

Manisha Pandey

Published On:

Sep 14, 2023