Taiwan is “not for sale,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Wednesday in response to Elon Musk’s comment that Taiwan is part of China.
“Listen up, #Taiwan is not part of the #PRC [People’s Republic of China] & certainly not for sale!” Wu wrote on X, the social media platform owned by Musk, in a post shared by the ministry’s account.
Wu posted the remark after Musk told the All-In Summit held in Los Angeles on Tuesday that Taiwan is “an integral part of China” and likened the two country’s relationship to that of the US and Hawaii.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“I think I understand China well. I’ve been there many times. I’ve met with senior leadership at many levels in China for many years,” Musk said.
“Strategically imagine trying to defend Taiwan [against China]; it is not easy,” due to their proximity, Musk said, adding that China’s military strength in the Indo-Pacific region would one day exceed the US.
Calling out Musk on his own platform, Wu wrote: “Hope @elonmusk can also ask the #CCP [Chinese Communist Party] to open @X to its people. Perhaps he thinks banning it is a good policy, like turning off @Starlink to thwart #Ukraine’s counterstrike against #Russia.”
If Musk’s comment was said to protect his own business interests, then “such remarks are not worthy of attention, and the speaker does not deserve respect,” ministry spokesman Jeff Liu (劉永健) told a news briefing yesterday.
UK newspaper The Independent said that comparing Taiwan to Hawaii “is flawed,” because “Hawaii is not a contested region” and “Taiwan’s assertion that it is its own state is not arbitrary, but instead a position it has held for decades.”
Donald Clarke, a specialist in Chinese law at George Washington University, said the comparison was “a serious mistake.”
Rebeccah Heinrichs, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, said that “Musk praises China, never says a critical word about the CCP or its hostile activities against America.”
Musk has previously fueled controversy with his comments on cross-strait relations. In October last year, Musk told the Financial Times that he suggested China “figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable ... It is possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that is more lenient than Hong Kong.”
“The official policy of China is that Taiwan should be integrated... One does not need to read between the lines,” he said during an interview with CNBC in May, adding that “there is a certain inevitability to the situation.”
Wu wrote on X: “Other than money, there is something we call VALUES.”
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