Troubled strait

For Beijing claims to be angered by increasing American support for Taiwan, by itself a non sequitur. It has expressed its opposition to visits by senior US officials to Taipei, which is surprising given that as long back as 2001, then President George W Bush had gone as far as to say that should China attack Taiwan, the US had an obligation to defend the latter. In the years after World War II, Washington and Taipei have shared a warm relationship although the need to engage with China had forced the US to redefine it.