Beijing’s relative silence over the, albeit fragile, truce in the Gulf was the loudest kind of humblebrag. China’s foreign ministry merely acknowledged that its top diplomat made more than a score of phone calls to involved nations and potential mediators, but even US President Donald Trump gave the country credit. It helped burnish China’s attempts to make itself out to be the rational superpower on the world stage, as Karishma Vaswani says: “While Washington is increasingly viewed as an erratic provocateur, Beijing has cast itself as a stabilizing force.”

Full opinion : The Hormuz crisis has exposed the weaknesses of Taiwan as it faces Chinese pressure.