China asked Elon Musk not to sell Starlink within the country

It’s unclear from the outline whether or not Musk agreed to Beijing’s request, however Starlink’s service map exhibits no plans to deploy in China. Adjoining international locations like Taiwan, Mongolia and Vietnam are listed as “pending regulatory approval.”

Providing a connection to the web that sidesteps standard service suppliers, Starlink has been a well-liked concept for circumventing network-based censorship all over the world. Most not too long ago, Starlink enabled entry in Iran in response to widespread protests and accompanying censorship. Web censorship in China, nevertheless, is much extra organized and protracted — and any ongoing try to evade it via Starlink would probably incur retaliation from the central authorities.

The anecdote is a reminder of how uncovered Musk is to worldwide pressures, at the same time as he champions free speech ideas in his public statements. As FT factors out, Tesla maintains a manufacturing unit in Shanghai, and the corporate has reportedly bought greater than 80,000 vehicles in China. Musk has remained broadly aligned with Chinese language authorities because of this, even authoring a column for {a magazine} run by the nation’s web censorship company.

On the identical time, Musk is extra probably than ever to take possession of Twitter. After months of complicated gamesmanship, Musk recommitted final week to buying the social community at his initially agreed value, telling a choose in his civil case with the corporate that he believes the deal will shut earlier than October 28. Twitter stays formally blocked in China.