Elon Musk Solutions
The world's top political leaders are currently pondering how to resolve the two major global conflicts, with their ramifications and consequences, that are of most concern: the war between Russia and Ukraine unleashed by Vladimir Putin, and the threat that China is projecting onto Taiwan. Now, billionaire Elon Musk, the man behind Tesla, SpaceX and probably also the owner of the social network Twitter as soon as he has decided to buy it by paying the more than 40 billion dollars he initially agreed to, has burst in this week with the intention of setting himself up as the arbiter and mediator of both disputes.
Earlier this week he proposed that Ukraine cede Crimea to Russia permanently, and that the United Nations organise guaranteed referendums to determine the future of Ukrainian regions unilaterally annexed by Russia. In his plan, Ukraine would 'Finlandise', in the old sense of the term, by agreeing to settle for neutrality between Russia and the West, which would ease tensions and defuse the threats now hanging over all of Europe. Musk made his proposal known on Twitter, and soon received a response from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who, after regaining control in part of the regions annexed by Putin, has pushed back and withdrawn the Russian army, which has also abandoned huge quantities of perfectly serviceable military equipment, making Russia the unwitting largest supplier of weapons to Ukraine.
At the end of the week, in an interview with the Financial Times, Elon Musk also proposed his solution to avert the other major threat that the whole world is watching: whether China will take Taiwan by hook or by crook, triggering a global war of gigantic proportions. Musk admits that such a conflict across the Taiwan Strait, formerly Formosa, is inevitable, with brutal impacts on the economy, including, of course, his own big business.
He advocates a special administrative zone, which he believes is "digestible and acceptable to all parties, even if none of them are satisfied with such an agreement". Again, the recommendations of the man with the world's largest fortune do not seem to be heeded. The official Chinese press, which is already preparing for the upcoming Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress and the probable eternal enthronement of President Xi Jinping, insists on the well-known thesis that Taiwan is one of the provinces that make up the country as a whole, and that it will have to return sooner rather than later to Beijing's fold. At the same time, various Taiwanese government spokesmen reject China's claims to sovereignty over the island, while the clamour is growing for the 23 million Taiwanese to freely decide their own destiny. In this respect, there are many references, logically negative, to the situation in Hong Kong, which is in fact subject to the authority of Beijing, which is accelerating the process of total assimilation, nullifying Deng Xiao Ping's promise of "one country, two systems", now seen as a distant chimera.
Elon Musk has the most profitable factory in Shanghai, accounting for more than half of Tesla's global production in 2021. In the above-mentioned interview with the Financial Times, Musk acknowledges that China has asked for assurances that he will not offer his rocket company SpaceX's Starlink internet service there.