Taiwan playing a risky game with China.

Jonathan Power, Columnist, London

Time is clearly on Taiwan's side in its long drawn out tug of war with China. But President Chen Shui-bian, ratcheting up the confrontational rhetoric with the mainland, is playing it as if there is no tomorrow. With an ardor that smacks of desperation he has already unleashed a series of political thunderbolts to ensure that the general election in March will not be fought over tired issues like the economy and the welfare state but over whether Taipei should play it hard or soft with Beijing.

All politics we know is local. But this in Taiwan is a dangerous game to play. Prof. Michael Mandelbaum in his recent book The Ideas That Conquered the World wrote that the Taiwan Strait "qualifies as the most dangerous spot on the planet". It came as no surprise that the Bush administration, which has its hands full with Iraq and Afghanistan and needs Beijing to support its efforts to persuade North Korea to nuclear disarm, last week sent an envoy to Taipei to encourage Chen to stop "sticking a finger into the eye" of Beijing.

And this week President George W. Bush will go out of his way to assure the visiting Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, that no change is contemplated in Washington's "One China" policy and that it strongly disapproves of any Taiwanese attempt to suggest otherwise, however subtly and indirectly.

All this makes a lot of sense and indeed continues the direction of U.S. policy set down by President Richard Nixon at the time of the recognition of Beijing as the legitimate China, rather than Taipei. The U.S. practices what is called double deterrence -- deterring China from an invasion on the one hand and deterring the Taiwanese from moving to declare their country independent.

Yet the policy suffers from a fundamental flaw- it ignores what may be the democratic wish of a majority inside Taiwan. It is on this point that the Taiwanese pro democracy liberal activists (who largely voted for Chen at the last election), who fought against the ongoing dictatorship of the Nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek and won democracy for their island, join hands with the old Nationalist rear guard in a common viewpoint -- that the will of the communist mainland must be resisted.

For the liberals it is a question not just of principle but also of history. Why should Taiwan forsake the cause of independence if it was only towards the end of the nineteenth century that Taiwan was claimed by China as a province and that lasted a mere ten years? Taiwan cannot be simply compared to Hong Kong where there was a lease to the British that was coming to its end.

These are important points and shouldn't willfully be turned aside by the needs of realpolitik. On the other hand Washington cannot at this late stage be expected to do a U turn on its "One China" policy and neither do the liberals or the foreign policy establishment in Taiwan really expect it to. The question always is how to keep this delicate circle squared and it is almost inevitable that with a close fought election looming over the horizon that the issue once again has become part of the party- political football.

President Chen is making much of the fact that China now has 496 missiles pointing at Taiwan. He reminds the U.S. of how nervous it was when Cuba pointed two missiles at it and asks "if you lived here how nervous would you be?" The fact is, however, these missiles are not nuclear tipped and even 500 missiles with conventional warheads could inflict only moderate damage, far less than NATO did on Belgrade four years ago.

The real deterrence is not these Chinese missiles, it is America's 72 F-15s based in nearby Okinawa and America's ability to deploy a carrier task force if necessary, not to mention its Los Angeles-class attack submarine on regular patrol in the waters of the Taiwan Strait. Beijing does not need to be reminded who would have the upper hand in any military confrontation over Taiwan.

Even so for the moment it is President Chen who must be leaned upon. He has stirred up the latest hornets' nest and it is he who has the responsibility to calm things down, however uncertain the result of the forthcoming election may seem to be. In day to day life China and Taiwan have never been closer.

Without the Taiwanese investment in China the country's high tech business would never have taken off in the way it has. China itself is changing so fast that the chances of there being a Chinese Gorbachev is not just wild dreaming -- increasingly it looks as if President Hu Jintao could be preparing to play that role.

A more democratic China will not be the end of all points of controversy between it and Taiwan but it will surely make Taiwan's life much easier in all sorts of important ways. Taiwan has to give China time. Time is Taiwan's friend. So, for the meantime, is the status quo.