Come to think of it, when Richard Nixon went to China, he also had to circumvent his State Department, which he thought was leaking documents to sabotage his historic overture. It was this trip that led to the entire reset between the United States and China and the gradual abandonment of Taiwan in the first place. Is it time to reconsider?

I don’t know about that, but I do know that Donald Trump sounded every day for a year-and-a-half like a presidential candidate uniquely unwedded to the status quo — especially when it came to China. And, by the way, those recent Trump tweets critical of Boeing and its CEO? This isn’t a subject that just popped into the president-elect’s mind recently.

Back in February, Trump began accusing the Chinese of nefariously conspiring with Boeing to lure manufacturing plants out of South Carolina. He talked about this before the South Carolina primary, telling audiences there, “It won’t happen if I’m president, by the way.”