TAIWAN'S new president wasted no time in showing his concern for the island's frontline. Barely 24 hours after his inauguration last weekend, Chen Shui-bian flew in last Sunday to inspect troops on the fortified outpost of Quemoy, the island which lies just off the coast of China's Fujian province.
He sought to calm nerves with reassurances that there was no imminent threat of war, coupled with a reiteration of his pledge to open small-scale direct links in the three fields of direct trade, transport and communication.
However, the islanders weren't at all impressed by his visit. In fact, many made little secret of their dislike for the new president. Quemoy natives overwhelmingly support the Kuomintang, whom Mr Chen defeated in the March 18 poll.
Just 700 islanders voted for Chen, while 80 per cent of the Quemoy electorate opted for former KMT stalwart turned independent candidate James Soong Chu-yu, who was widely considered the most friendly of the mainstream contenders towards Beijing.
Quemoy, known to Chinese as Kinmen, lies 10 kilometres off the coast of China and is 280km west of Taiwan. The Guningtou sentry at the northwestern tip of the island is only 1.8km away from the coast of Fujian, making Quemoy the closest of Taiwan's offshore islands to the mainland.
'Taiwan becoming independent? There's no such thing,' scoffed Feng Chuanxiong, a 73-year-old war veteran from China's Hunan province, now living in Quemoy. 'If Taiwan wants to be independent, the communist crooks will attack us.' Quemoy native Wu Tseng-dong feels the same. He is leading a stable life, having inherited a thriving knife-making business from his father. Between 1949 and 1958, the Chinese communists attacked Quemoy - Taiwan's military stronghold - five times, leaving over a million spent shells on the island.