On June 12, when the world was transfixed on the summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore, a major ceremony was taking place in Taipei to mark the opening of a new diplomatic complex of great geopolitical significance. Occupying 6.5 hectares, with a cost of US$225 million, the new five-story American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) is the biggest diplomatic compound in Asia, bigger even than the US embassy in Beijing.