Taiwan hits back at Elon Musk claim that it is ‘an integral part of China’ and teases him over Beijing’s Twitter ban
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.
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.
According to this Tesla's sales breaks down like this in 2022:
That's a significant chunk of its business.
Yes absolutely, although I see the numbers slightly different:
The graph says USA 41, China 18, other 23 billion USD. That translates to:
USA 50%
China 22%
other 28.
USA is higher than I expected, but still USA and Europe are way more important combined than China from that graph. So maybe Musk shouldn't rely so much on China, if he wants to look out for his own interests.
I rounded for the sake of argument. If you look at the overall trend you'll also see that China is the biggest growth market. Why would you think for one moment that any company would cut off their second biggest market which also has the biggest growth?
Fair enough on the rounding, and I wouldn't expect him to cut off a valuable market, except his actions could mean cutting off the actual biggest markets, and there is no guarantee China will continue their growth rate in the future.
And is it really necessary for him to be a shill for China to make business there? I'd expect just shutting up would suffice.
I'd say he is compromised to gain an advantage.
That one is easy: yes.
If he wants to do some real business in there, he also needs to break some laws so they can
blackmailhold him in check and take away his business in case he ever refuses to follow orders.Also: most Teslas destined to the European market are made in China
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.
presidentdictatorArguably, 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.
CCP is probably worse than British rule.
Might need to double check British history if you actually think that. The British Empire was comically evil
Not by the time the CCP became a thing though.
The UK wanted to introduce full democracy in Hong Kong prior to the handover to China in 1997. China's response was to threaten to send in the tanks.
Hong Kong has zero democracy today, the majority of the Legco seats are unelected, and those that are elected, Beijing nominated all the candidates.
I think both are bad. I don't care if it's "slightly better" they shouldn't be occupied. Full stop.
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.
When relentless coverage of terrible people, and their insane words/actions, results in said people winning fair elections, I think the intelligence of the electorate might be the biggest problem.
But yes, that's beside the point, as is their growing mental illnesses and instability. The wealth/power they've been allowed to accumulate will always make them a danger/threat that should be taken seriously.
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
Sure, but poor people aren't having influence over tense geopolitical situations.
Exactly my point. We could spend 1 year auditing / investigating 1-2 billionaires and have way more government funding and way less foreign interference, but we don't because the system is working as intended
Well certainly not with THAT attitude!
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!
Wow, Musk sure does love licking boots...
He does seem to have a few fetishes. Makes sense.
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.
Tesla co-founder? Since when?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Founding_(2003%E2%80%932004)
Since 6 years after it was founded.... That's just silly
How so? Tesla had no product, basically no employees, and no money. There are other things to hate on Musk for, but is there any indication that he wasn't involved in the company like a cofounder would be?
Yeah my thoughts exactly. A lawsuit can't change the truth of the founders.
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.
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.
Fuck of it is.
It’s calling out the authoritarian, imperialist wankers who think using force against the people is the solution.
Communism is fine, tankies are not.
Right...
So supporters of the US must be tankies too, right? Or is it the "authoritarian" part you're angry about and not the "imperialist wankers who think using force against the people is the solution" part?
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 whore, 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?
I think (?) there's a few, but I don't know as I'm not an iOS user 🤷♂️
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
I'm convinced that this guy gets off of getting his name on articles.
Which is why he bought Xitter
Oh COME ON. This guy is actively mocking Taiwan now, too??
Damn it, Muskrat
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.