1y ago

Taiwan hits back at Elon Musk claim that it is ‘an integral part of China’ and teases him over Beijing’s Twitter ban

www.independent.co.uk Taiwan calls out Elon Musk after he calls it ‘integral part of China’

Tesla co-founder previously suggested Taiwan should become a ‘special administrative zone’ in China

Elon Musk, the owner of X/Twitter, was called out on his platform by Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs after calling the island nation an "integral part of China" and insisting that he understands "China well."

Mr Musk made the comments on the "All In" podcast while answering a question about China and the future of his involvement with the nation.

During the interview, Mr Musk said "I think I understand China well," and notes that he's been there several times and has met with high-ranking officials.

He then turns his attention to Taiwan, and compares its relationship to China to Hawaii's relationship to the US, insisting it is "an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China”.

That comparison is flawed in two major ways: first, Hawaii is not a contested region, but is unquestionably a US state with all the same powers and freedoms granted any other US state; second, Taiwan's assertion that it is its own state is not arbitrary, but instead a position it has held for decades.

85 comments

suggested Taiwan should become a ‘special administrative zone’ in China
Yes, because that worked so perfectly for Hong Kong. 🤥
I bet China would embrace such a deal happily even with eager, wait a few years, and then force full integration.
Musk is such an idiot, that I lack words to describe it. He has been convinced (bribed) by China to spew shit in all directions regarding Ukraine and Taiwan, he is 100% an undeclared foreign agent of the worst kind.
- He has a clear financial interest due the Tesla factories in China and the amount of cars sold there.
  
  Yes, and I bet China is leveraging that, and Musk falls for it.
  But I doubt it surpasses USA and Europe combined. Which should be his real interests, and probably would be, if we used similar methods the Chinese do.
- then force full integration.
  Don't be silly, China is a democratic country... they would hold a vote, like they did with HongKong: 99% for, 1 against. Totally democratic. 🤫
  
  It's really sad, because China was making good progress before Xi Jinping became president.
  
  Arguably, Hong Kong is more democratic today than when it was administered as a colony under the British Crown.
  Under British rule, the Queen appointed a governor of Hong Kong, who himself appointed virtually the entire legislative branch. They did not have elections.
  Today 20 out of 90 legislative seats are elected, and from my limited understanding is essentially governed under a system evolved from British rule.
  You'd think Americans of all people would also hate British Rule.

This guy really doesn't know when and how to shut up.
- It's intentional
  
  Yeah, I think people underestimating Musk is extremely dangerous.
  Everyone underestimated Trump too and gave him 24/7 coverage because of how “stupid” he was.
  Assume a powerful enemy is intelligent, or you’ll not understand how they got their power and will be perplexed as to how they grow it and how they will abuse it.
- I'm just wondering why the U.S. DoJ isn't doing anything about it.
  
  Same reason the IRS spends all their time auditing poor people who made mistakes instead of auditing one billionaire for year. The metrics they're graded on aren't based on quality, they're based on quantity. Going after a billionaire is expensive, and sure, it would have lasting positive impact, but they're graded on number of cases closed
- Well...this musk person is a well paid shill so...uhm yeah
  ¯(ツ)_/¯

I’m just sitting here waiting for Elon to go bald so he can finally come out as Lex Luthor.
- He already did. Then he paid a bunch of money to get the hair back.
  
  Thats what $200 billion is for
  
  Ahh, the Bezos plan.
- He wishes he was Lex Luthor lol
- At some point DC started to design Luther after Trump. Now hear me out; if you happen to watch Harley Quinn, I believe that this is what they are trying to do with Luther right now. They are shaping him into a Musk lookalike.

Hawaii was occupied and taken. Taiwan was not.
That Mao captured the mainland does not make the island conquered. Or annexed.
- If Beijing sends in a fruit magnate, Taiwan should start worrying!

What the fuck is this moron going to say next? "Hitler wasn't all wrong"?
- He’s gotta take the dunderheaded asshole position on everything apparently. He’d probably be YouTubing from his car right now except he has people fly him everywhere.
- Taking bets on that one soon. I wonder if he is getting brainwashed by his own algos.

Literally every single day we have idiots doing Musk’s PR work for free.
Downvote Musk spam. The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle.

Taiwan should simply not sell microchips to Muskian companies. Let him use 80s ex Soviet chips instead.
- As great of a plan as that sounds, companies like TSMC wouldn't dare to risk tanking their profits just to spite a single company run by an absolute dingleberry.
  
  TSMC will do nicely with other companies (re: Apple, which gets most of its chips anyway). Threatening a leading manufacturer is silly when there’s plenty of other companies desperate for premiere hardware.

Tesla co-founder? Since when?
- The company was incorporated as Tesla Motors, Inc. on July 1, 2003, by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.[13][14] Eberhard and Tarpenning served as CEO and CFO, respectively.[15] Eberhard said he wanted to build "a car manufacturer that is also a technology company", with its core technologies as "the battery, the computer software, and the proprietary motor".[16]
  Ian Wright was Tesla's third employee, joining a few months later.[13] In February 2004, the company raised US$7.5 million (equivalent to $12 million in 2022) in series A funding, including $6.5 million (equivalent to $10 million in 2022) from Elon Musk, who had received $100 million from the sale of his interest in PayPal two years earlier. Musk became the chairman of the board of directors and the largest shareholder of Tesla.[17][18][15] J. B. Straubel joined Tesla in May 2004 as chief technical officer.[19]
  A lawsuit settlement agreed to by Eberhard and Tesla in September 2009 allows all five – Eberhard, Tarpenning, Wright, Musk, and Straubel – to call themselves co-founders
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Founding_(2003%E2%80%932004)
  
  Since 6 years after it was founded.... That's just silly
- Yeah my thoughts exactly. A lawsuit can't change the truth of the founders.

Extreme wealth and a love of authoritarianism, name a more iconic duo.

So Elon is basically now acting like a tankie?
This is fucking hillarious.
- Elon and false communists both benefit capitalism
- Forgive my ignorance, but what is a 'tankie'?
  
  It essentially is calling someone a communist supporter. In 1956 Hungry had an uprising against the soviet union (USSR) communist rule. The soviets used tanks to crush the revolutnaries swiftly and used a similar tactic in 1968 to quell similar events in Czechia. When members of the communist party of Great Britain showed support for these actions it became common in GB to refer to them as tankies referencing the attack on hungry. The term has now expanded its use from exclusive to brittish political discourse to more global/universal label for a sympathizer to opressive communist regimes.
- He sort of half listens to grimes sometimes and forgets where it came from

Why does this tool have an opinion about absolutely everything?
- That's what having too big of an ego do to you
- Truly smart people are happy to give opinions about topics they have some knowledge of and tend to not weigh in on things they know they're ignorant about. Then there are people like Musk who seem to think they're an authority on absolutely fucking everything.

I’m surprised he was able to say all of that with Xi’s dick in his mouth
- You would have thought his mouth was too full already stuffing Putin and The conservative nazi base's dick in that mouth of his, first... boy this guy can sure deep throat.. but he is a removed, so it makes sense

Didn't he recently say he does everything he can to prevent wars and the like?
Cause this is quite the exact opposite of trying to prevent wars.

Really wish I could figure out how to set up a filter for this POS so I don’t have to keep encountering him.
- You can! Are you accessing via mobile app or web? Many of the mobile apps allow keyword filtering
  
  I’m using Liftoff! (iPhone). Love it, but don’t see that option. Are there any iPhone apps that will allow this that you know of?
- same! bump me if some explains how

How do I block articles about him from showing up?
- You could try to Connect app (!lemmyconnect@lemmy.ca), which allows you to filter posts containing an arbitrary string or regex.

Wait, what?!
Did that gigantic moron tell Taiwan is part of China???
- He knows who's buying 70% of his cars. And that's not Taiwan.

why not the opposite?

Elon should become a special administrative prisoner in some chinese gulag

By that logic it's also completely arbitrary that mainland China isn't part of Republic of China.

Oh COME ON. This guy is actively mocking Taiwan now, too??
Damn it, Muskrat

I'm convinced that this guy gets off of getting his name on articles.
- Which is why he bought Xitter

I wish there was a filter to block any post with this asshat's name in it.

How can they hit!?

People think this guy is an idiot yet there's not a single day he's not on the front page. Keep on fueling his popularity...
- I used to want a Tesla and loved catching SpaceX streams but this has all soured them for me.
  
  Me too... To pour salt in your wound... Did you hear they're only published on X now?
  To get over it, I just remind myself that there are many other talented people working for SpaceX and Gwynn Shotwell runs the day to day operations.
- Even if I try to avoid it, I see reality stars on the front page of new sites everyday. Does that make them more popular to me? No.

85 comments