Elon Musk wades into Taiwan and China row despite backlash over Ukraine ‘peace plan’

Tesla founder claims Beijing-Taipei conflict is inevitable and would wipe 30 per cent off global economy

Tesla boss Elon Musk (NTB/AFP/Getty)

Elon Musk has proposed a solution to growing tensions between China and Taiwan – just days after coming under fire for suggesting a “peace plan” for Ukraine and Russia.

The world’s richest man said he believes conflict in Taiwan is inevitable, and – similarly to his propositions for Kyiv earlier this week – suggested handing over some control to Beijing.

China regards Taiwan as part of its territory, despite it having been governed independently since 1949 and recognised as a sovereign country by more than a dozen other nations.

Mr Musk said his recommendation “would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable, probably won't make everyone happy”.

“And it's possible, and I think [probable], in fact, that they could have an arrangement that's more lenient than Hong Kong,” he told the Financial Times.

Hong Kong has recently experienced its largest-ever population drop, with 140,000 residents applying for special visas in the UK, offered in the face of political unrest in the former colony. It comes amid attempts by Beijing to exert increasing authority despite the “one country, two systems” principle agreed upon during its handover in 1997.

The same principle – initially developed with Taiwan in mind – was rejected by the island’s government as recently as August after it was proposed afresh by China in a white paper, and has virtually no public support. At a news conference in Tapei, a foreign ministry spokesperson warned that only Taiwan's people can decide its future.

According to the Financial Times’s editor Roula Khalaf, who interviewed Mr Musk as part of the paper’s “Lunch with the FT” series, the longest silence to any of her questions followed her enquiry about the risk to his electric car firm Tesla’s factory in Shanghai, which accounts for between 30 and 50 per cent of the firm’s total production.

Speaking against a backdrop of increasing US-China tensions, which came to a peak during House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August, and the risk of a potential Chinese attempt to wrest control of the island, Mr Musk said that Tesla would be caught up in any conflict involving Beijing.

But he reportedly appeared to assume that his Shanghai factory would still be able to supply to its customers in China, just not anywhere else. “Apple would be in very deep trouble, that’s for sure” he added, before predicting that the global economy as a whole would take a 30 per cent hit.

Mr Musk said that Beijing has made clear its disapproval of his recent rollout of Starlink – the satellite communications system created by his company SpaceX – in Ukraine to help Kyiv’s military circumvent Russia’s disruption of the internet.

It was a development that further evidenced how Starlink could be used to circumvent censorship and repression by authoritarian governments, and Mr Musk said that Beijing sought assurances that he would not sell the product in China.

Despite his immediate support for Ukraine in the face of the invasion ordered by Russia’s Vladimir Putin in February, Mr Musk drew the ire of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky with a Twitter poll of his suggestions for ending the war.

Mr Musk’s ideas included Ukraine permanently ceding Crimea to Moscow, and holding votes in parts of Ukraine that the Kremlin says it is annexing – after Mr Putin ordered a series of sham referenda in a hasty bid to shore up his military gains in the face of an ascendant Ukrainian counter-offensive.

In response, Mr Zelensky created his own poll, asking: “Which Elon Musk do you like more? One who supports Ukraine [or] one who supports Russia?”

Ukrainian ambassador Andrij Melnyk replied that his “very diplomatic” response to Mr Musk’s suggestions was merely to “f*** off”, while Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov accused the Tesla founder of “moral idiocy, repetition of Kremlin propaganda, a betrayal of Ukrainian courage and sacrifice”.

Following his remarks on Taiwan, one senior official familiar with security planning there told Reuters that “Musk needs to find a clear-headed political adviser”.

Wang Ting-yu, a senior politician in Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party who sits on the parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee, responded to the Tesla founder: “Individual independent companies cannot take their ownership as a joke.

“So why should they casually pass off the democratic freedoms, sovereignty and way of life of 23 million Taiwanese? It’s not acceptable for Ukraine, and Taiwan certainly won’t allow it.”

Asked about Mr Musk’s comments, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told Reuters that Taiwan was a “domestic affair”, and said that Beijing would continue to adhere to the principle of peaceful reunification while “resolutely smashing” Taiwanese separatism.