China's democracy dilemma

Substitute the word 'democracy' for 'independence', and the furious invective that Beijing leaders were throwing at Taiwan last week becomes easier to grasp. Real democracy on Chinese soil is far more dangerous to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership than a breakaway province.

Despite historical references to bringing Taiwan back into the fold, the party was in no hurry to conquer Taiwan as long it was ruled by the Kuomintang (KMT), in many ways a mirror image of itself.

The KMT and CCP, which have ruled the Chinese for more than 80 years, are twins from the same pod, the fruit of Sun Yat-sen's decision to ask the victorious Bolsheviks how to establish power after the fall of the Qing dynasty. It was Lenin's answer - a military-backed one-party centralised dictatorship - which provided the model for the founders of the KMT and the CCP. The latter began merely as the extreme left-wing of the KMT.

The challenge by Chen Shui-bian and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) shatters this cosy consensus. Now Taiwan could be the base for the democracy movement mainland leaders fear. And what will mainland Chinese think about democracy if Mr Chen runs Taiwan so well that it marches ahead of them? With no other party able to play a role, the CCP did nothing during Taiwan's massive arms build-up of the 1960s and 70s. The only serious military attack was in 1958 when Quemoy island was bombarded because Mao Zedong believed the Great Leap Forward had given him economic strength. When the mainland teetered on the edge of collapse, the attack stopped.

The next attack took place with the missile tests in 1995 and 1996 when the KMT permitted the first openly fought elections for the Legislative Assembly and the presidency.

So although a generation of mainlanders had been taught that it was the People Liberation Army's duty to liberate the Taiwanese from KMT oppression, the PLA did nothing until the Taiwanese had a chance to choose their own leaders.