My strong suspicion is that none of the presumed stratagems in Lee's move is very important. He is on his way out, and he can knowingly and shrewdly ratchet relations up a significant grade between the two states while his own statements and persona remain a lightning rod for Chinese fulminations. When he has left the scene after next year's elections, Taiwan and Beijing can negotiate on a new basis of relative equality, and while the Chinese leadership will resent the necessity, they can project this distaste onto a person so familiar a process for them. There are good reasons for the old leadership of Beijing to resent Taiwan. While we stand in awe of its culture, respect its economic achievements, and wish it the greatest success as a major power in international affairs, we do not condone the harassment of a small country, behavior that by now China should have outgrown.
China is already and deserves to be a major player in world affairs.
But the world community needs to stand back and tell our friends in Beijing that it is time to call a spade a spade. You will look far better for it, your power and economy will grow accordingly, and the world will have one less tinderbox to worry about. It is unseemly and only too revealing of your own failures for you to behave in so adolescent a way toward this remarkable success that Taiwan can show. Show yourself a worthy central kingdom that Taipei is only too eager to honor as the fount of its culture. And then deal with it, perhaps in the way London deals with Ottawa or Canberra related, smaller, but equal.