[1/2]Speech by Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu during the European Values Summit in Prague, Czech Republic, on June 14, 2023. REUTERS/David W Cerny/File Photo Get license rights
TAIPEI, Sept 14 (Reuters) – In a scathing rebuke to Elon Musk, who insisted Taiwan is “not for sale” and an integral part of China, the billionaire once again became embroiled in ties between billionaires. Beijing and Taipei.
Musk, who owns social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, as well as electric car company Tesla ( TSLA.O ) and the Starlink satellite network, made the comments uploaded to YouTube this week at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles. .
“Their (Beijing’s) policy was to reunify Taiwan with China. From their point of view, it may be similar to Hawaii or an integral part of China, it is not part of China. The fleet has stopped trying to reunify by force,” he said.
Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu responded in a post on X late Wednesday that he hoped Musk could ask China to “open up @X to its people.” China blocks X along with other major Western social media such as Facebook.
“Maybe he thinks it’s a good policy to shut down @Starlink to thwart Ukraine’s counterattack against Russia,” Wu added. Attack on Russian Navy there.
“Listen, Taiwan is not part of the PRC & certainly not for sale!” Wu said, using the acronym for People’s Republic of China.
Taiwan’s democratically elected government strongly rejects China’s sovereignty claims, and says only the people of Taiwan can decide their future.
This isn’t the first time Musk has upset Taiwan, where Tesla has a huge factory in Shanghai.
Last October, he suggested that tensions between China and Taiwan could be resolved by ceding some control of Taiwan to Beijing, drawing a similar sharp rebuke from Taiwan.
(This story has been reprinted to add the word ‘of’, which was dropped in paragraph 1)
Ben Blanchard reports; Editing by Stephen Coates
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