'Not for sale'; Taiwan officials furious with Musk over China comments
3 Min Read
Taiwanese officials go ballistic after Musk said Taiwan is an integral part of China.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during a meeting with former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (not pictured) at the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing, China, on January 9, 2019. (AFP)
Taiwan's Foreign Minister asserted that "Taiwan is not for sale" after Elon Musk said the island is an integral part of China.
Musk, the billionaire owner of X, Tesla, and SpaceX, made this statement at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, which was uploaded to YouTube.
He remarked, "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."
Read more: Tesla's Musk praises China's 'vitality' on Beijing visit
In response, Taiwan's Foreign Minister, Joseph Wu, took to X to express his hopes that Musk could request China to open up the Western social media platform to local users.
Wu also referred to Musk's refusal to activate the Starlink satellite network in Crimea's Sevastopol, claiming, "Perhaps he thinks banning it is a good policy, like turning off @Starlink to thwart Ukraine’s counterstrike against Russia."
The Foreign Minister then said, "Listen up, Taiwan is not part of the PRC (People's Republic of China) & certainly not for sale!"
Last October, Musk suggested that tensions between China and Taiwan could be resolved by ceding some control of Taiwan to Beijing, prompting a strong reprimand from Taiwan.
Taiwan claims that China has increased its military presence around the island, saying the People's Liberation Army has deployed 68 warplanes and 10 navy vessels near the island during the past 24 hours.
"68 PLA aircraft and 10 PLA vessels around Taiwan were detected" between Wednesday and Thursday morning, Taiwan's Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The warplanes include 35 warplanes detected on Wednesday morning. Taipei said they were headed to an unspecified area in the Western Pacific to "conduct joint sea and air training with the Shandong aircraft carrier."
The batch of aircraft, including fighters and drones, was detected at 6:00 AM, on Wednesday (2200 GMT Tuesday), Taipei's Defense Ministry said.
It is worth noting that China adopts the One China principle, which was reached during a joint communique between the US and the PRC where the latter "acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China" and "does not challenge that position."
In recent years China has accused the US of breaching the One China policy as it held several high-level talks with Taiwanese officials and has increased its military presence in the Taiwan Strait.
