"My recommendation… would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable, probably won't make everyone happy," Musk said while responding to a question about China, where his company Tesla operates a super factory in Shanghai.

Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province of China that they will eventually reclaim, either through diplomacy or by force. China has offered Taiwan a "one  country, two systems" model of semi-autonomy similar to Hong Kong, which has been rejected by mainstream Taiwanese political parties.

"And it's possible, and I think probably, in fact, that [Taiwan] could have an arrangement that's more lenient than Hong Kong," Musk continued.

Beijing imposed a tough National Security Law on Taiwan in 2020.

In response, a senior lawmaker for Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party, Wang Ting-Tu, hit out on Facebook- writing: "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?"