Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) called out Elon Musk on Twitter, saying the value of democracy transcends that of money after the Tesla CEO said that China was likely to “integrate” Taiwan.
Asked in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday last week if “China would make a move to take control of Taiwan,” Musk said that “the official policy of China is that Taiwan should be integrated... One does not need to read between the lines.”
“There is a certain inevitability to the situation,” he added.
Photo: screen grab from CNBC
“That is their policy, and I think you should take their word seriously,” Musk said.
Regarding whether such a move by China would be bad for Tesla, Musk said that the Chinese economy and the global economy are like conjoined twins and any attempt to separate them would affect them both.
Responding to Musk’s comments, Wu on Friday wrote on Twitter that the Chinese Communist Party’s “bullying & threats are a concern, especially for those who would rather stay free & democratic.”
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Time
Beijing’s global expansion undermines the rules-based international order and “status quo,” he added.
“Mr. @ElonMusk, other than money, there is something we call VALUES,” he wrote on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Twitter account.
The post has so far received more than 130,000 views and hundreds of responses, with some commenters praising Wu for speaking out, saying they believe Musk only cares about his own interests.
Other commenters said they believed Musk was only expressing the thoughts of the business community and that Taiwan would never boycott Tesla.
Among them was Mark Simon — previously the personal assistant of Jimmy Lai (黎智英), the jailed founder of Hong Kong’s Next Digital, formerly Next Media — who said that taking on Musk was a “bad fight to pick.”
Separately, a report published by The Economist on Thursday said that from the perspective of China, the Starlink satellite Internet system provided to Kyiv by Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) not only puts Russia at a disadvantage in its war with Ukraine, but also raises concerns about Taiwan.
If SpaceX gave Taiwan access to the system, it would make a Chinese invasion much more difficult, it said.
Analysts say that if China invaded Taiwan, it could start by severing the 14 undersea Internet cables that keep the country connected to the world, the report said, adding that Taiwan is adding cables and planning how to defend its landing points.
The government is also testing antennae in 700 locations, including outside Taiwan, that would be able to send and receive signals from low Earth orbit satellites, like the ones Starlink uses, The Economist said.
Although China has the capability to shoot down satellites, the Starlink network is made up of more than 4,000 satellites and aims eventually to have tens of thousands.
As such, China might have more success leaning on the SpaceX CEO to deny Taiwan access to Starlink, given that Musk’s other major venture, Tesla, has a large factory in Shanghai, The Economist said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,