'if Taipei accepted a “more lenient version” of the formula China already applied in Hong Kong.'

Which means what? There will be only 75% effort on political suppression?

HK may as well be China now, the only thing special about its status is the extra amount of monitoring it gets from the CCP. Musk should put his brain in gear before he engages his mouth, but I guess when the CCP has your star preforming factory held by the balls you need to tow the line.

Old PRC cross-strait white paper allowed TW 1C2S more permissive than suzeranity, no PRC administration or military stationed on island to interfere with domestic politics and some semblence of control over foreign policy. Basically Two Countries Two Systems in all but name. TBH stupid amount of concessions on PRC part. Those conditions were removed in new white paper last month + extra spicy threat of re-educating independance advocates.

Following these news, I have reclassified Musk from "moron" to "dangerous". To be sure, given unresolved questions around a potential Kessler syndrome caused by putting bazillions of satellites in LEO that reclassification is somewhat belated.

Oh and here's laowhy86 taking down Musk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9UQkMw5QVc

Wasn't Elan ranting against communism just a few days ago?

One almost wonders if Taiwan's sharp reply should have been to offer Elan free life-long mental health care. It's starting to feel like he might not be need-free in that department. :(

Why free? Even 1 billion $s is enough to spend like 27,400$ per day for an entire century so one would assume that money could be targeted better.

In context - "free" makes the implicit insult to Elan somewhat stronger, and insulting him would be the goal of Taiwan making such an offer. The $/day calculation could only be relevant if he took them up on it - which is an extremely unlikely outcome.