THE RISING EAST

By Richard Halloran

Gradually, with hardly anyone noticing, President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan has emerged as the most influential player in the island nation's volatile triangle of relations with China and the United States.

The reason: The Chinese are stuck with a rigid "One China" policy that shows no inkling of imagination or flexibility, and the Americans are paying only sporadic attention, hoping the issue will go away. That leaves Chen latitude to maneuver between them.

Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu celebrate their re-election at their May inauguration in Taipei. While the United States and China maintain fixed positions on Taiwan's defense, Chen walks a fine line between angering China and supporting the island's desire for independence. AP library photo

The standoff begins with Beijing's relentless claim that Taiwan is a province of China, and its insistence that the Taiwanese accept that demand. The Chinese repeatedly have threatened to use military force to conquer Taiwan if the island declares independence or delays unification.

In pursuing that claim, Chinese leaders are boxed in by all manner of problems. Beijing seems to realize that attacking Taiwan would incur devastating economic losses. And China's military leaders, after years of brushing off the U.S. commitment to help defend Taiwan, evidently have begun to realize the potential U.S. military role in the defense of Taiwan.

In Washington, the Bush administration, preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror, has no long-range objective in its China or Taiwan policy. In recent weeks President Bush has concentrated on patching up relations with traditional allies for his run for re-election against Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee from Massachusetts.

Nonetheless, American military officers quietly have expanded their contacts with Taiwan's armed forces, sending observers to Taiwanese war games to learn their strengths and weaknesses and how U.S. and Taiwanese forces might mesh operations in the event of hostilities.

They also have continued limited contact with Chinese officers in a deterrence effort. In a private exchange, a senior Chinese officer harangued his American counterpart, saying China would brook no foreign interference on the issue of Taiwan. The American replied dryly: "In the Pacific, we own the sky and we own the water" — referring to air and naval supremacy — "so let's talk about something else."

In this precarious equation, President Chen has been building a consensus at home intended to sustain Taiwan's ongoing separation from the mainland without a formal declaration of independence.

Taiwanese suggest — and the polls bear them out — there is a widening consensus on maintaining the status quo, de facto independence. "We are already a sovereign, independent nation," one Taiwanese says. "To declare independence means to declare independence from something. There's no need for that."

Former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui and Chen have taken the same position. In his address in May to inaugurate his second term, Chen took a firm but conciliatory approach to China. "If both sides are willing," he said, they "can seek to establish relations in any form whatsoever."

In Beijing, the new regime led by President Hu Jintao is stuck at dead center, beset by former leader Jiang Zemin, who is still chairman of the regime's military commission and the People's Liberation Army. Hu cannot show himself to be weak on the Taiwan issue.

Hu is further hemmed in because hostilities with Taiwan and the United States would severely damage the trade and foreign investment vital to a China with 300 million unemployed or underemployed — 40 percent of the labor force. Last year, China exported $152 billion worth of goods to the United States, its biggest export market.

In addition, the Bloomberg news agency reported China has accumulated $527 billion in foreign investment and has another $1 trillion contracted. The United States, Japan and Taiwan have the largest foreign investments in China, which would disappear in a war.

Several years ago, many Chinese asserted that the United States would not defend Taiwan. That notion has changed. As the Defense Department said recently: "Beijing sees Washington as the principal hurdle to any attempt to use military force to regain Taiwan."

Robert Sutter of Georgetown University agrees: "The U.S. is seen by Chinese officials as the dominant power in Asian and world affairs, and the main potential international danger to confront and complicate China's development and rising power and influence."

Richard Halloran is a former New York Times correspondent in Asia.