Bill: I don't think there is "any significance in the recent shifts back and forth in the language about Taiwan" because I don't think there has really been "shifts back and forth." Although the Chinese don't always say it when we want them too, Xi's and Wang's comments make it clear that Beijing has sustained the position that it will "strive for peaceful reunification," which was never a promise to ONLY pursue peaceful unification. My interpretation of the language in Li's work report ("We will promote the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations [and] be firm in advancing the cause of China’s reunification") is that Beijing merely wants to remind Taipei and Washington (and everybody else)--in the wake of recent developments in US-Taiwan relations that Beijing views as promoting permanent separation--that the firmness of its determination to achieve unification might someday override its preference for doing so peacefully. But even that we already knew.