For weeks, media in Taiwan had speculated on the tricky protocol involved should Chen Yunlin, the most senior Chinese official to visit the island since the 1949 communist revolution, meet its president, Ma Ying-jeou.

After Beijing's decades of maintaining that Taiwan was a wayward province, and not a separate country, greeting him as "Mr President" was almost unthinkable. A simple "mister", however, would be nearly as taboo, given Chinese notions of hierarchical propriety.