If events along the Taiwan Strait seem too peaceful to be interesting these days, just wait a while: things will almost certainly get more exciting before long, perhaps uncomfortably so.
To be sure, increased tension is not the goal of any of the main players - Taiwan, Beijing and the United States. All three officially endorse an ambiguous 'status quo' as their key objective, at least for the short term.
By this, Beijing continues to claim Taiwan as a long-lost province, while Taipei keeps its distance but without declaring independence. The US, in the meantime, counsels restraint on both sides while pledging in an imprecise way to help Taiwan if Beijing ever attacks. All this is designed to keep the peace by putting off a resolution of basic issues indefinitely.
Unfortunately, in real life that status quo is anything but static. All three are doing things that could upset this careful arrangement and nudge them towards unwanted disputes. Outright hostilities remain extremely unlikely, but a period of unsettling tension could result, perhaps enough to shake the political calm of East Asia.
The leading protagonist is the newly re-elected Taiwanese President, Chen Shui-bian. Despite his narrow and perhaps lucky victory, he now insists he has a mandate to push ahead with constitutional reform and other political changes that Beijing fears are a prelude to declaring independence in 2008. Beijing has long declared that it would react with military force if Taiwan ever did so.
Yet the Chinese government is doing nothing new, useful or imaginative to make itself more appealing to the Taiwanese public. Rather, it continues to upgrade its armed forces and keeps adding to the 500 or so missiles deployed opposite Taiwan. On the political front, it sticks to a 'one country, two systems' offer that all major Taiwanese political groups reject completely. By sticking to these old and unsuccessful policies, Beijing in fact helps Mr Chen politically. It makes the mainland seem a determined menace, and reinforces a growing feeling among Taiwanese that their personal identity is something other than Chinese.