Five members of the US House of Representatives visited Taiwan on Thursday and Friday, and met with senior officials of the island's secessionist-minded administration.

This is the second batch of US lawmakers to visit the Chinese island this month in open defiance of the Chinese mainland's strong opposition and the commitments the United States has made in the three joint communiques relating to the island.

The provocative visit came even after US President Joe Biden underscored that the United States upholds the one-China policy and the commitments it made in the three communiques in his virtual meeting with President Xi Jinping on Nov 16.

The Biden administration is well aware the Taiwan question is a core interest of China and its provocations risk encouraging the secessionists on the island to cross Beijing's redline. Yet it has no qualms about persisting with them, even though in his talk with President Xi, President Biden urged the Chinese side to work together with the US to prevent their competition from veering into conflict by installing "guardrails".

Beijing has made it clear that it believes that trust and mutual respect are the foundation on which to build guardrails for relations.

But for the US administration, talking about guardrails seems to be nothing more than a stalling tactic for it to win more time in which to hobble China's development. If so, not only are the two countries' strategic objectives drastically different but also the ways they are going about implementing that consensus are poles apart.

US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman was bluntly informed that Beijing has seen through the cheating nature of the Biden administration's China policy discourse when she visited China in July.

Blacklisting Chinese companies on baseless charges, inviting Taiwan to its "democracy summit", inciting Lithuania to challenge the one-China policy, zigzagging warships along the Chinese coast to conduct so-called freedom of navigation operations and sending warships to routinely transit the Taiwan Straits, the Biden administration has left no stones unturned belying its claim that it seeks to manage the competition between the two countries responsibly.

The administration seems to be intent on forcing Beijing to accept that it is its policies to contain China that are the foundation on which to build the guardrails it keeps saying are necessary.

If so, what it seeks from Beijing is tolerance of it continuing to indulge in all its aforementioned provocations.

The US has no buffer zone with China as it did with the Soviet Union. Its provocative and dangerous actions could have sparked a conflict many a time were it not for the restraint the Chinese side has exercised. The question is for how long China will tolerate the administration saying one thing and doing another.