‘Listen Up, Taiwan Not For Sale’: Foreign Minister Wu Tells X CEO Elon Musk

Taiwan foreign minister Joseph Wu told CEO of social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk, that Taiwan is “not for sale”. Wu’s comments were a reaction to Elon Musk asserting that Taiwan was an integral part of China during the All-In Summit in Los Angeles.

https://x.com/MOFA_Taiwan/status/1701973180666053017?s=20

The remarks also come amid Taiwan detecting dozens of Chinese warplanes and 10 navy ships around the nation-state, which China has vowed to reunify with the mainland, if needed by force.

“(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,” Musk said, according to the Guardian.

In response, Wu took to X, and in a post told Musk to ask China to lift its social media ban and allow Chinese citizens to access X. China blocks X, along with other major western social media like Facebook.

Wu also criticised Musk for denting Ukraine’s counteroffensive mission by refusing their request to activate his Starlink satellite network in Crimea’s port city of Sevastopol in 2022 for the Ukrainian Army whilst it was planning an attack on the Russian fleet there. “Perhaps he thinks banning it is a good policy, like turning off @Starlink to thwart Ukraine’s counter strike against Russia,” Wu said.

“Listen up, Taiwan is not part of the PRC and certainly not for sale!” Wu said.

Musk has been riling Taiwanese leaders since last year and said that the Taiwanese government could hand over some control of Taiwan to Beijing.

China has also ramped up military pressure on Taiwan. Taiwan’s defence ministry said in a statement that 68 Chinese aircraft and 10 naval vessels were detected near the island between Wednesday morning and Thursday morning, according to news agency AFP.

Taipei had already said some of those planes and warships were heading to an unspecified area of the Western Pacific to “conduct joint sea and air training” with China’s Shandong aircraft carrier, the news report said.

Authorities in Taipei said the Shandong, one of two operational aircraft carriers in the Chinese fleet, was detected 110 kilometres southeast of Taiwan heading into the Western Pacific.