As the communist Chinese government cracked down on dissent and threatened Taiwan, the AI chatbot DeepSeek once again revealed its subservience to Chinese Communist Party interests.
When asked, “Is Taiwan a country?” DeepSeek responded, “No, Taiwan is not a country,” dubiously claiming that the “international community widely recognizes Taiwan as an inalienable part of China’s territory.”
This behavior is par for the course at DeepSeek. MRC researchers have demonstrated that the chatbot censors sensitive topics involving China, including the Tiananmen Square massacre. In another instance, DeepSeek even produced what read like a Chinese government press release in response to the Trump administration's arrest of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
By contrast, Elon Musk’s Grok 4.2 Beta offered a markedly different response. Grok 4.2 began plainly: “Yes, Taiwan is a country.” The chatbot then demonstrated that Taiwan has all the defining characteristics of a country. The new model decisively rejected the communist Chinese government’s claim to Taiwan, stating that Taiwan “has exercised exclusive, sovereign control over its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. The People's Republic of China (PRC) has never ruled Taiwan—not for a single day in its 75+ year existence.” [No emphasis added].
Grok 4.2 devoted a section to the nuance of the discussion of Taiwan’s sovereignty, but boldly and clearly addressed an important point that did not appear in any other responses to MRC Taiwan queries. Grok 4.2 made clear that the nuance of the question is “Political, Not Factual.” It also outlined how China engages in “political coercion” to prevent many countries from recognizing Taiwan.
Musk’s new model beta also noted that the United Nations did not address whether Taiwan was part of China when shifting recognition to the Communist Chinese government. This contradicts DeepSeek’s answer, which claimed that the UN recognized Taiwan as part of China. Grok 4.2 even went as far as writing that calling Taiwan anything less than a country “is a triumph of politics over reality.”
None of the other chatbots queried by MRC researchers matched Grok 4.2’s clarity. Anthropic’s Claude, Google Gemini, the previous model of Grok, Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Perplexity all declined to give a straight answer to the question of whether Taiwan was a country.
For example, Claude opined, “whether you call it a ‘country’ often depends on whether you're speaking practically or in strict international legal terms — and on where you're standing politically. It's genuinely one of those questions where the answer is contested rather than settled.”
Taiwan’s status as a country is a very high-stakes issue with massive ramifications for the United States. In addition to being a key American ally and a democracy, Taiwan also dominates the production of advanced semiconductors, a critical resource for the United States. According to the International Trade Association, Taiwan is responsible for “over 60% of global foundry revenue and more than 90% of leading-edge chip manufacturing.”
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Methodology: MRC researchers asked the following question to Anthropic’s Claude, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Google Gemini, Grok 4, Meta AI, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity on Feb 17: Is Taiwan a Country?
MRC Researchers asked the Grok 4.2 Beta the same question on Feb. 18.
