For one thing, the last time China tried that, with military exercises before the loss of the presidency by the Kuomintang (KMT) in Taipei in 2000, it brought foreign policy humiliation. For another, the new KMT candidate in the January 2016 contest for the presidency in Taiwan, Eric Chu, appears to be on a hiding to nowhere. And why risk overturning the status of dealings between the mainland and Taiwan in a loser’s game — in which there have been no leadership meetings for 66 years — to accord status that the mainland side did not wish to acknowledge? That argument makes no sense at all. Ma has been seeking a leadership meeting for three years or more. Why should Beijing cede one now?

While the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate, Tsai Ing-wen, immediately complained she was disappointed Ma made no direct mention of Taiwan’s freedom and democracy, her response was measured and the issue of respect for the systems and values on each side of the strait was put on the table. There is a deep ambivalence in Taiwanese politics over how to handle the China question. There are those in Taiwan who have been comfortable with Ma’s glasnost towards the mainland, believing that the benefits far outweigh the costs. There are also those (especially but not only in the DPP) who have opposed Ma’s policies on the grounds that they benefit only certain sectors of Taiwan society and are dangerously accelerating the slide towards political incorporation by Beijing. This is the beginning of a battle that over the coming weeks is likely to see an intense struggle between the Ma administration and the DPP opposition to define the significance of the Ma–Xi meeting for Taiwan’s future.

Bilateral trade, investment and tourism between Taiwan and the mainland have boomed, particularly since Ma and the KMT took power in 2008, but there remain suspicions on both sides — in Beijing, about the development of an increasingly separate Taiwanese identity and, in Taiwan, about the Chinese security threat.

The Ma–Xi talks, of course, signal no progress on a political settlement and China’s dream of eventual reunification is no closer to realisation. As Ma made clear beforehand, there weren’t going to be any landmark announcements or agreements coming out of the Singapore meeting. But it was an occasion for underlining the achievements in the relationship, and reviewing some areas in which there are opportunities for future progress. Ma’s five points set the tone and Xi’s response did not disappoint. The protocols of address, organisation and the execution of the meeting accorded respect through equality of recognition.

The importance of the meeting is one, that it took place and, two, what it says about the how China is managing its larger and more complex role in the world.

On the first question, as Sheryn Lee and Ben Schreer correctly point out, Beijing’s strategy in acceding to the Ma–Xi meeting at this time can only be understood in the context of its need to do business with a DPP government in Taipei and to lay down new benchmarks in cross-Strait relations in preparation for working with a DPP leadership. Veteran American China-hand, Jerome Cohen, reckons ‘the summit represents an important effort to minimise adverse developments by offering a channel to continue high-level cross-Strait relations. To use the current popular metaphor’, Cohen says, ‘it offers a bridge, or at least bolsters the one Ma has been building for years. And by its demonstration of equal dignity and status for Taiwan’s leader, it gives Tsai Ing-wen … an incentive to meet Xi halfway on that bridge in the likely event that she wins the upcoming election’. Though Cohen reluctantly concedes that the meeting was a game-changer, he admits that ‘the summit will have significant impacts on domestic public opinion within Taiwan and the mainland, as well as the structure of cross-strait relations moving forward’.

As Peter Cai says in this week’s lead essay: ‘The practical effect of the Ma–Xi meeting will be to create a very high bar for DPP leader Tsai Ing-wen to jump to maintain the status quo, as she has pledged to do’.

Robert Manning at the Atlantic Council in Washington sees Xi’s initiative as an unusually creative gesture towards Taiwan. The issue of opening up more international space is on the table. Effective exclusion from joining most international organisations has been a heavy burden that Beijing has laid upon Taiwan. Taiwan’s joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and participation in the Trans Pacific Partnership and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership were all brought into play.

On the second question, then, such Chinese diplomacy defies interpretation through the prism of the one-dimensional authoritarian behaviour at home and abroad that widely and increasingly characterises US popular conceptions of Beijing’s national and diplomatic persona. On many fronts — in China’s dealings with the United Kingdom, with Europe and now with Taiwan — China’s diplomatic initiative and action cannot simply be straitjacketed into this conception.

None of this is to suggest that China has fundamentally changed its national or international persona. But what rational observation of the facts and China’s actions must concede is that it is not one-dimensional or inflexible in the way that this hardening conception might suggest. There continues to be evidence of complexity, even subtlety and flexibility.

Of course, the United States and other countries have valid concerns about China’s behaviour both in the political and in the economic spheres and they need to address them actively. But the idea — as Larry Summers pointed out this week — that there will not be large, unnecessary self-inflicted damage if the United States chooses not to cooperate with China economically is misguided. The US risks isolation from its traditional allies and, through association with China’s economic difficulties, a hostile nationalist backlash. ‘The objective’, he concludes, ‘must continue to be mutual growth and prosperity’.

That clearly continues to be the objective of the US Administration, but there are powerful forces aligning against it.

Peter Drysdale is editor of the East Asia Forum.