At one minute past noon last Monday, a ballistic missile broke the surface of the Pacific, fired from a Chinese submarine somewhere underwater. It flew for roughly half an hour and came down in the South Pacific — where three Chinese survey ships were already waiting to measure exactly where it landed.

At almost the same hour, in a hotel lobby in Taichung, in central Taiwan, a Japanese commentator who has spent years criticizing Beijing was punched in the face by a stranger dressed in black.

One of those events could, by some estimates, reach Florida. The other reached one man’s jaw. This week is about what connects them — and about a hypothesis this show made last week that just got tested.