Thus The Wall Street Journal today. “One of the most significant outcomes of the rallies in Hong Kong over the past weeks has been to further diminish whatever was left of Beijing’s hope of bringing Taiwan into its fold,” elaborates the newspaper. A good point, at least at first glance. The unification of China must be an important end among most of China’s leaders. And peaceful unification must be a tack dear to some of them. On second glance, keeping Tibet and Xinjiang in the fold must be paramount to all of them. And this is where peaceful means are out of the question. One China, whatever this means, has no future without quite some muscle. So far, the Hong Kong tumult has gone smoothly enough, but there could hardly be any question of what would have happened had the discontents gone out of hand. Returning to Taiwan, bringing it into the fold will surely remain one of the uppermost ends of China’s leaders no matter the means. They have all the time in the world, though. The dream will not be derailed all that easily. The first serious crisis in the region, and the island will be theirs. In population terms, it is only a bit more than three times larger than Hong Kong. Peanuts.