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Sino-US ties: How not to create a crisis
The Tsai-McCarthy meeting offers useful lessons on avoiding escalation. They should be heeded because more trouble lies ahead.
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Learning the lessons from the recent Tsai-McCarthy meeting is especially important because the general direction of Sino-US ties remains so bleak, says the writer.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The most important aspect of China-US ties over recent weeks is not what happened, but what did not. US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not take a trip to Taiwan to meet President Tsai Ing-wen. China therefore did not repeat the unprecedented military action that followed the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August 2022. And thus the wider region was not plunged into a new period of crisis between the superpowers.
So why did all this not occur, and who deserves credit?
