COMMENT | When China issued a warning and threatened action if US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not cancel her planned visit to Taiwan, did China expect the US to cower and cancel the visit in deference to China’s wishes?

Or would the US interpret it as a blatant, outrageous attempt to control its right to visit any place it wanted to further its own interests and strengthen ties with long-standing friends, especially when it was welcomed with joy and open arms by its hosts?

Events have answered the questions for us and no matter how China and its worldwide brigade try to present things to water down the battering of China’s international image, the unmistakable conclusion is that China blinked and backed down.

What is unsettling in this sorry, needless, episode on the world political and military stage, with an outside possibility of war if anything happened to Pelosi, is that the Chinese can misread US intentions to go ahead with the visit so wrongly.

Did China’s president Xi Jinping think that by making such threats he could stop the world’s most powerful country from exercising its legitimate right to visit what is effectively an independent nation of 23 million people with which the US has had very long historical links buttressed by...