China issues mild but clear warning on Taiwan

As the sun sets today, here on the beach at Xiamen, there is little feeling of anything remotely close to war preparation. Teenage couples steal some time together, and there's an amateur kickboxing match. The high schoolers, who have all seen the Hollywood blockbuster "The Matrix" in the past week, are thinking more about that film than Taiwan. Down the road is a huge Dell Computer plant, a Toyota factory, and everywhere new, upscale apartment complexes are under construction, making the coastal city look like a little Singapore.

China regards Taiwan as its exclusive property, the last link in a equation that will give the Middle Kingdom strategic dominance in Asia. With China now deeply involved in managing the North Korean crisis, the Taiwan dispute is potentially one of the most destabilizing in Asia - since the US is committed to aiding Taiwan. (What that means has long been deliberately ambiguous in US strategy.)

Many progressive thinkers in China, including peace activists who are opposed to war in almost any form, have been known to abandon their views when it comes to the Taiwan question. The issue connects deeply with Chinese ideas of sovereignty, and even to the purpose of the Communist Party as the government of China.

In 2000, when Mr. Chen was elected leader of Taiwan on an independence platform, in the first real democratic elections on the island - Beijing's reaction was virulent. Not until a year ago was Chen's name allowed to be published in Chinese state media. Yet, many in China's leadership circles argued that their own vitriolic bombast lent him voter support. A posture of calm and quiet was adopted, a strategy of economic integration pursued along with efforts to ensure that Chen is not reelected next March.

Only last August, it appeared that the Chen administration was on the ropes. The ruling DPP was running seven to 10 points behind in the polls; Chen was heavily criticized as being visionless and as an obstructionist to Taiwanese business interests in China.

Yet Chen now seems to have taken the offensive again. In the wake of mass protests in Hong Kong last summer, Taipei organized its own 200,000-strong independence rally.

A Chinese attack on Taiwan would rank as a catastrophic event in Asia with unforeseen consequences on every front. One clear result, say analysts, would be an undoing of the past five years of China's evolution: that China is no longer a revolutionary state, that it is a stable harbor for investment, and a reliable and dependable regional partner that hews to the international mainstream.

What Beijing's comments this week suggest, however, is that "no options are off the table," says a Western analyst.

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