TAIWAN: After a hectic fortnight in cross-strait activity, Taiwan's ruling pro-independence party won an election on Saturday that is seen as a qualified endorsement for President Chen Shui-bian's policy of keeping Taiwan and China separate.
Mr Chen's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won 42.52 per cent of votes in an election for the National Assembly, an ad-hoc body formed to decide on constitutional reforms.
The victory underlined the DPP's status as Taiwan's largest political party but it was overshadowed by a turnout of just 23.36 per cent.
China considers democratic Taiwan a renegade province that must eventually be reunified with the mainland and it has introduced controversial legislation, which, it says, allows it to take Taiwan by force if necessary.
Mr Chen's DPP takes the line that Taiwan people must be allowed to choose their own path and it numbers independence from China as one of the options open to them, prompting fury across the strait.
There had been suggestions that the DPP may have been damaged after Chinese president Hu Jintao held a number of recent, high-profile meetings with opposition leaders, which resulted in offers of economic concessions to the island.
Recent historic visits by the Kuomintang Nationalist Party chairman Lien Chan and People First Party chairman James Soong to China have been seen as attempts to steal Mr Chen's thunder.
The Chinese have hundreds of missiles pointed at Taiwan across the channel that divides the two and the strait is potentially one of the most explosive hotspots in Asia.
The US has pledged to back Taiwan if China should ever invade.
The election was about reforming the national assembly to cut the number of legislators and revamping the electoral system. The reforms have the support of both the DPP and the Nationalists.
China is irritated because it believes the reforms could pave the way for the DPP to write a new constitution for Taiwan, which may include pro-independence rhetoric.
Taiwan, which is officially named the Republic of China, split from China after the 1949 Communist revolution as Chiang Kai-shek's KMT troops retreated to the island. It retains the same constitution as Chiang's Nanjing government, and in theory claims the mainland as its territory.
"If this election result is taken as a barometer of support for political parties, then the DPP has held on to its position as number one, even though low turnout rate puts that judgment in doubt," ran an editorial in the China Times on Sunday.
There was no coverage of the election in China but the Chinese media are very interested in the re-emergence of "panda diplomacy" - the Chinese have also offered a pair of pandas as a goodwill gesture.
In an another sign of fraught relations, China has expressed its anger at the tiny South Pacific island nation of Nauru, which it says has broken faith with Beijing by switching diplomatic allegiance to Taipei.