For weeks, media in Taiwan had speculated on the tricky protocol that would be 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 effort trying to suppress any notion that Taiwan is a country rather than a wayward province, greeting him as “Mr President” was almost unthinkable. A simple “mister”, however, would be nearly as taboo, given Chinese notions of hierarchical propriety.