Unpredictable Reactions

Three interesting developments with US and China.

China sent contradictory signals on Thursday about its policies toward the United States following the Obama administration's decision on Jan. 29 to sell $6.4 billion worth of arms to Taiwan.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry had threatened the day after the administration's announced [sale] that it would halt some military exchanges with the United States and would take unspecified steps to punish American companies that produced the weapon systems. On Thursday, China seemed to ease its objections to military cooperation with the United States, but the country's flagship carrier, Air China, announced that it would buy 20 A320 jets from Airbus, a European consortium, rather than from Boeing, one of the manufacturers of arms for Taiwan.

I am sure Boeing was expecting to win the deal, but the Airbus A320 is a great plane so it is possible China simply picked it over the Boeing option. Possible...

But that isn't all, earlier this week China sent an envoy to North Korea to discuss their nuclear program.

A senior Chinese Communist Party official held talks with North Korea on Sunday, state media said, as Pyongyang comes under growing pressure to return to nuclear disarmament talks.

The trip by Wang Jiarui, head of the Communist Party's international department, comes shortly before UN chief Ban Ki-moon's top political adviser Lynn Pascoe is due in Pyongyang.

May seem like no big deal, but both the engagement with North Korea on 6-party talks and allowing the Nimitz to call port in Hong Kong are activities one could have expected China to snub because of the Taiwan weapons deal.

These are very noteworthy shifts, for no other reasons than they don't conform to conventional wisdom, or said another way, the way China has historically dealt with a US policy they disagree with.