Yet Mr Chen said in his acceptance speech that his victory marks 'a new era for peace across the Taiwan Strait'. Does he really believe that Beijing, which fired missiles over Taiwan during its first presidential elections in 1996 and broke off talks with Taipei entirely after the DPP won in 2000, will talk to him now that he has won again?

That may not happen right away, but Mr Chen probably thinks officials in Beijing will do so in the end. The thing about Mr Chen is that he is used to dealing with totalitarian regimes. He knows that no matter how fearsome they seem, no matter how loudly they swear that they will kill everyone before budging from their current position, in the end they generally have to talk, because they live on the same planet as everybody else.

Mr Chen grew up fighting Taiwan's own totalitarians, the KMT, whose members retreated to the island in 1949 after losing the civil war with the communists on the mainland. The KMT were totalitarians of the right who ruled Taiwan with an iron fist for 40 years, and they were just as brutal as their mainland rivals: Mr Chen's wife Wu Shu-chen is wheelchair-bound following a 1985 murder attempt in which she was hit by a truck and then run over three times. Every leading member of the DPP has spent years in jail for opposing the KMT.

Now Taiwan is a democracy, and the KMT is the opposition party. It is no longer dedicated to reconquering the mainland, and does not even give lip service to reunification any more: Mr Lien promised that Taiwan 'would never merge, be taken over, or be united with the People's Republic of China'. The lesson is clear: do not listen to what they say - figure out what they are going to do in the end. Generally, that is much less fearsome.

Mr Chen and his opposite numbers in Beijing are just making a politician's usual calculations about what will play well in the domestic marketplace, and balancing that against what will work in the wider economic and international arena.

For Beijing, talking loudly about Taiwan's indissoluble bonds with the motherland plays well with a local public that no longer responds to communist rhetoric but is strongly nationalistic. For Mr Chen, it works the other way round: most Taiwanese would like to be independent, so he plays that card domestically.

However, Beijing would be hugely reluctant to invade Taiwan, even if it were militarily feasible, because the resulting crisis would kill economic growth at home and might eventually bring down the government. Mr Chen knows that, and he never goes far enough to goad Beijing into attacking.

Only two weeks ago, he was 10 points behind the KMT, mainly because Taiwan's economy is stagnant and unemployment is at almost 5 per cent. Therefore, he needed the independence issue to close the gap - and he counted on Beijing to understand that this was his reason for using it. The Chinese government almost certainly knows that.

Was the assassination attempt the day before the election another political stunt? Certainly not. No hired hitman could fire a handgun at a man in a moving car and be sure of grazing his stomach - Mr Chen needed 14 stitches - but be equally sure of not killing him. The attempt was real, and Mr Chen was doubly lucky, for he survived, and then got the sympathy vote.

Now he is back in office for another four years (barring a recount that reverses the outcome, which is unlikely). Will he vigorously pursue independence? Of course not. As he fully expected, he lost a referendum that was supposed to set the precedent for Taiwan holding a real referendum on independence later on. For the outcome to be valid, 50 per cent of the voters in the presidential election had to ask for a referendum ballot, and since the KMT told its supporters to boycott it, there was no risk of that happening.

The referendum failed, and Mr Chen is free to carry on as before. Just maintaining Taiwan's de facto independence has produced ample rewards for most people, and they are not thirsting after martyrdom in the name of some political ideal. Neither is Mr Chen: the crisis was never real.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist