Taiwan; Trade data; Outflows; Outbreaks in Hainan, Xinjiang and Tibet

I have given up on my attempt at vacation. I will be off tomorrow, Tuesday, for something I had already scheduled, but should be back to the normal publishing schedule Wednesday. At some point I need a real vacation (don’t we all?) but it is too hard to stay away right now.

PLA exercises around Taiwan continued today, though the tempo seems to have moderated a bit. It is still too early to tell but it does increasingly look like we have entered into a new status quo of PLA operations in the Taiwan Strait and around Taiwan. The Pelosi visit was the proximate pretext for these exercises but from the way they were rolled out they appear to have been preparing for just such an event for a while.

So far the US has not reacted beyond public condemnations and declarations that the Pelosi visit did not represent any change in US policy. Will the US military make any show of force in the region, and do other countries in the region want that? How would Xi and the PLA view a US decision to not …