JOSEPH KAHN reports how Taiwan Casts U.S. as China Intermediary, which is where we don't want to be:

President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan is pressing the Bush administration to approve his plans to change the island's Constitution, casting the United States as an intermediary in the most delicate issue dividing China and Taiwan, Taiwanese officials said Tuesday...

Mr. Chen sent Chiou I-Jen, the secretary general of the presidential office, to Washington this week to outline changes he plans to make to the Constitution during his second term in office, the officials said. If Taiwan gets the blessing it seeks, Mr. Chen may make constitutional change a centerpiece of his inaugural address on May 20, they said.

...Taiwan's supporters in Congress and some neoconservative thinkers in Washington are also urging the administration to offer greater support to the island, which they view as a democracy under threat from China's Communist Party-controlled military....

Mr. Chen hopes to persuade the United States that his proposal for changing the Constitution will focus on the legal framework of Taiwan's central government and its legislature, which he argues must be overhauled because it is irrelevant and ineffective in present-day Taiwan.

But Taiwanese officials said Mr. Chen will pledge not to change Taiwan's official name, the Republic of China. He will also promise to keep the red-and-blue flag of the Republic of China and refrain from rewriting references to the territory Taiwan claims as its own. Those are among the most sensitive issues that China sees as symbolizing Taiwan's national status and maintaining its links to the mainland....

While Taiwanese officials present Mr. Chen's plans as conciliatory, Chinese analysts say they fear that any constitutional reform in Taiwan could easily lead to a direct challenge to the mainland. They say Mr. Chen has not lived up to pledges he has made in the past to improve ties with China.

Moreover, Mr. Chen is not expected to detail how he wants to overhaul the Constitution until after legislative elections in December.

There's the rub. While Taiwan's constitution is overdue for change, the fact that Chen loves to go back on his word makes it very likely that once he gets some sign of support, he'll be tempted to please his hardcore by pushing for something that may very well push the commies over edge. So that's why Armitage pressed Chen to reaffirm his 'five noes' pledge, which Chen Shui-bian indicated during his first inaugural speech in 2000, saying, as long as the Chinese communist regime does not intend to use force against Taiwan, he promised what he would not do during his term:

• I will not declare independence,


• will not change the name of the country,


• will not push for the incorporation of a special state-to-state model of cross-strait relations into the Constitution and


• will not push for a referendum on the independence-unification issue that will change the status quo.


• Nor will there be any question of abolishing the National Unification Guidelines and the National Unification Council.

Still, as Gerrit van der Wees wrote

The fact is that the "five noes" were never popular among his core followers.

They saw the "five noes" as unnecessary roadblocks on the road to full democracy in Taiwan and full acceptance of the nation in the international community.

Then Mr. van der Wees goes on to excoriate the Americans for not supporting Taiwanese independence. Not a word about how this might drive the commies ballistic. Elsewhere he writes,

From the European perspective, we congratulate Chen and the DPP on his re-election, and for making democracy work in Taiwan spite of mountainous challenges.

(Those are the same Europeans who want to sell weapons to China, and are far less supportive of Taiwan than the US.) In the same article, he claims

Anyone who loves Taiwan is considered Taiwanese, irrespective of ethnic origin. The present leadership in the KMT/PFP, on the other hand, has whipped up ethnic discord by twisting and distorting Chen's position.

I suppose it's all in your definition of loving Taiwan. There's plenty of prejudice against people whose families came over from the mainland with the KMT.