Resident Fellow David Frum

Listen children, and I will tell you a tale of long, long ago.

Once upon a time in China there lived a man named Chiang Kai-Shek. He led a Chinese political party, the Kuomintang, that fought China's communists. The Kuomintang lost the fight, and Chiang and his followers took refuge on the island of Taiwan, 100 miles off the coast of China. For the next quarter century, Chiang and his heirs claimed to be the "real" government of China and ruled Taiwan.

In those final days, Chiang Kai-Shek and his regime became objects of ridicule and resentment among left-wing people all around the world. Imagine Ariel Sharon and Ahmed Chalabi rolled into one, and you get some idea of the intensity of the anti-Chiang feeling. Right-wingers revered Chiang as an icon of anticommunist resistance.

Chiang died, and was succeeded by his son, who relaxed Chiang's martial law regime. Environmentalists, feminists, human rights activists could organize. In the mid-1980s, these groups protested the construction of a nuclear reactor project. Out of these protests emerged a new political party, the Democratic Progress Party. The DPP wanted no part of Chiang's "reconquer the mainland" grandiosity; they were satisfied to be citizens of a small island with no pretensions to great power status.

Even as Taiwan democratized, the two parties continued to carry the impress of their origins: the KMT appealing most strongly to voters who valued traditional Chinese culture, to military veterans, to rural and older voters and above all to refugees from mainland China; the DPP appealing most strongly to the young, to the urban, to the less tradition-minded and to the long-settled Taiwanese.

So here's an ideological Rorschach test: Which of these two parties would you describe as the more "right wing" party and which as the more "left wing"? Got your answer? OK--now let me make things more complicated.

The Chinese of course refuse to recognize Taiwan's right to self-government. They fired missiles across the Taiwan Strait in 1996 to protest Taiwan's first free presidential election. In 2000, the Chinese threatened to attack Taiwan if voters elected a DPP president. When the Taiwanese defied China's threats and voted DPP anyway, China accelerated its build up of missiles aimed at Taiwan. It aimed only 50 missiles against the island in 1996; it deploys almost 1,000 today.

The two parties have responded to this security challenge in very different ways. The "left-wing" DPP has proposed to purchase American warships, surveillance craft and interceptor missiles. It presses the U.S. to engage in joint training exercises with Taiwanese forces, to allow U.S. naval vessels to call at Taiwan ports and to change current policy so as to allow serving generals and admirals to visit Taiwan.

The "right-wing" KMT prefers detente. It has used its majority in Taiwan's parliament to stall the DPP's arms purchases. It advocates closer contacts with China even if China refuses to recognize Taiwan. Some of its members voice rising doubts about the relevance of the U.S.-Taiwan alliance. Leading KMT members have travelled to Beijing to hold party-to-part talks with leading Chinese Communists.

You can get dizzy trying to follow the ideological kaleidoscope twists of the modern world! The right-wing party is the party of detente; the left, the party that wants to buy new weapons. The right-wing party tilts toward communist China; the left, to George Bush's United States. How can this be?

The KMT is above all things the party of Chinese nationalism. It desperately wishes to avoid conflict with fellow-Chinese. The KMT also recognizes that Taiwan must inevitably do business with China. If doing business means a little symbolic submission, well, small nations have to make practical compromises.

The DPP is above all things the party of Taiwan autonomy--and as China grows stronger and more menacing, the DPP has discovered new enthusiasm for selfdefence and the U.S. security guarantee. It recognizes that symbolic submission today may invite demands for actual submission tomorrow.

As usually happens in a democracy, there's much truth in each party's distinct point of view. And as also often happens, outsiders may feel that the two parties agree at least as much as they disagree.

But few democracies live under such threat and pressure as Taiwan. And the most worrying question about the island's future is this: will the disagreements between the parties open opportunities for China to meddle in the island's affairs? One hears persistent rumors in Taiwan that the Chinese Communists pressure Taiwan businessmen with interests on the mainland to make campaign donations to their ancient enemies in the KMT. China ranks among the most corrupt countries on Earth. Young democracies are vulnerable to external corruption.

I travelled to Taiwan worried that the Chinese might try to invade the island. I returned worrying that China will try to buy it.

David Frum is a resident fellow at AEI.