US should not let Tsai lead it by the nose

Two US Navy vessels passed through the Taiwan Straits on Monday, less than a week after the island's leader Tsai Ingwen claimed the Chinese mainland posed a military threat to the island in an interview with CNN. Whatever the rationale the United States might be using to justify the move, Tsai and her followers will very likely try to portray it as the US responding to her claim that the mainland is challenging the island's "independent existence".

Both she and Washington know the island has no such thing. It is Tsai who is dangerously playing with fire, emboldened by the ill-considered support offered her by Washington.

Since she took office as leader of the island, Tsai has stubbornly refused to acknowledge the 1992 Consensus that there is only one China and Taiwan is part of it. In doing so, she has plunged cross-Straits relations into their worst crisis in many years.