Taiwan 'not for sale': Taipei slams Elon Musk over ‘blindly flattering’ comments for China

Taiwan slammed Elon Musk on Thursday (September 14) for his comment about the island nation. Taipei called out the US tech billionaire for "blindly flattering" Beijing after he called the self-ruled island "an integral part" of China.

China views self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory and even claims that, in case needed, it will use force to unite the two territories. For the same, China boosted its military presence near democratically governed Taiwan in recent years.

Musk said, "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 U.S. Pacific Fleet has stopped any sort of reunification effort by force."

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Musk's comments came during an All-In Summit in Los Angeles, which was uploaded to the video-sharing site YouTube this week.

While responding to the same, Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said that he hoped Musk could ask China to "open @X to its people". China blocks X, along with other major Western social media like Facebook.

In a post on X late Wednesday, Wu said: "Perhaps he thinks banning it is a good policy, like turning off @Starlink to thwart Ukraine's counterstrike against Russia."

Wu referred to Musk's refusing a Ukrainian 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 PRC (People's Republic of China) & certainly not for sale!" Wu said.

China's plans for strengthening integration with Taiwan

China has come up with a new path to move forward with its bid of "peaceful unification" with Taiwan and has unveiled a plan to turn Fujian province into a model zone for "integration" with the island nation.

The Chinese policymakers released detailed measures to turn the southeastern mainland province into a demonstration area for integrated development across the Taiwan Strait.

The move aims to "deepen cross-strait integrated development in all fields and promote the process of peaceful reunification".

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The plans include proposals to make it easier for Taiwanese people to live, study and do business in Fujian, as well as encouragement for companies in the province to hire staff from Taiwan.

Taiwan's democratically elected government strongly rejects China's sovereignty claims and says only Taiwan's people can decide their future.

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