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The billionaire Elon Musk proposed that tensions between China and Taiwan could be settled by giving Beijing some control of Taiwan days after floating a hypothetical agreement to end the war between Russia and Ukraine that attracted criticism in Ukraine.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, told the Financial Times in an interview that was published on Friday, “My proposal… would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is pretty palatable, probably won’t make everyone happy.” Musk made the comments in response to a question from the newspaper regarding China, where his electric car business Tesla runs a sizable facility in Shanghai.
Beijing has long threatened to annex Taiwan and hasn’t ruled out using force to do it. Beijing claims that Taiwan, which is democratically run, is one of its provinces. The 23 million people who live on the island alone can decide its future, according to Taiwan’s government, which vehemently rejects China’s claims of sovereignty.
And it’s possible—in fact, I believe they might have a more forgiving agreement than Hong Kong, according to the newspaper’s quotation of Musk.
About half of Tesla’s annual deliveries worldwide were made in Shanghai. Additionally, Musk said that China has asked for guarantees that his SpaceX rocket company’s Starlink internet service would not be made available there.
Musk declared that he believed a conflict over Taiwan was inevitable and foresaw its potential effects on not only Tesla but also iPhone manufacturer Apple Inc. and the broader economy. On those remark, the interview provided no further context.
This week, Musk put up three proposals: Ukraine should accept neutrality; Crimea should be permanently ceded to Russia; and new referendums should be held to decide the future of the Russian-controlled peninsula. Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine, criticised him harshly for asking Twitter users to weigh in on his proposal and suggested his own poll instead: “Who do you prefer among @elonmusk? an individual who backs Russia or Ukraine.”
