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A crisis can bring a family together. A natural catastrophe may often unite a nation. A calamity could make old adversaries blink. Thus as the outbreak of the virile H1N1 flu (Mexican flu) now assumes dangerously global dimensions, half-way round the world in the Far East, members of the Chinese family are allowing a cautious political thaw in their once chilly relations across the Taiwan Straits.

The reasons for the diplomatic warming trend are many and have less to do with the current influenza outbreak as with the practical and realistic step-by-step rapprochement in the long-strained ties between the two Chinese governments since the Communists seized the Mainland in 1949 and the Nationalists went into exile on...