That possibility, however, was rapidly brushed away by the second name that appeared in my consciousness - John F. Kennedy.

The 35th president of the US, Kennedy - like Mr Chen - was shot in public while on a campaign trip in anticipation of an imminent presidential election.

Kennedy's death on November 22, 1963, led to a mass outpouring of grief, almost unprecedented media coverage, and the surfacing of numerous conspiracy theories.

Charged with Kennedy's assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald was shot by gangster Jack Ruby before he could be tried in court.

China and Albania were the only two nations that did not send representatives to Kennedy's burial ceremony on November 25.

It is extremely tempting to highlight the similarities between the assassination attempts on Presidents Kennedy and Chen. But they differ in one very obvious respect: President Chen survived.

To top it all, he won the election, admittedly by a narrow margin: even the number of invalid ballots exceeds the margin of victory ten-fold. This situation has caused dispute over the validity of Mr Chen's claim to the presidency.

This is where he starts to resemble another US president: George W. Bush. Mr Bush's eventual ascent to the presidency in 2000 hinged heavily on the ballot counts in the state of Florida, where he triumphed over his opponent, incumbent vice-president Al Gore, by mere hundreds of votes out of more than five million. Incidentally, Mr Bush's younger brother served as governor of the state.

China has been trying to bully Taiwan into submission for more than half a century. Never underestimate a country that once thought itself the centre of the universe.

Ms Yeung is a student at the University of Pennsylvania