The summit's most durable fact may be the order in which each capital described it. The paper's Thursday brief on Mao Ning's Taiwan-first readout said the asymmetry was the artifact: Beijing led with Taiwan, Washington led with Iran and Hormuz.

Friday did not erase that split. BBC's summit coverage kept the broader stabilization frame while noting the competing priorities around trade, Taiwan and security. [1] Yonhap's account of regional reaction treated Taiwan and the Korean peninsula as part of the same East Asian risk register. [2] CBC's Reuters-sourced account preserved the Chinese hierarchy: Taiwan as the most important issue in US-China relations and a danger if mishandled. [3]

Washington needed the Hormuz paragraph to show that Xi had joined its maritime language. Beijing needed the Taiwan sentence to show that Trump had heard the warning. Neither need cancels the other. Together they show why the summit can be sold as stability and still leave the hard questions untouched.

The consequence is uncomfortable. Asking Beijing for help on Hormuz does not remove Taiwan from the table; it may raise the price of keeping Beijing at the table at all. The public readouts are not transcripts. They are receipts each side prints for its own audience.

-- DAVID CHEN, Beijing