Taipei

TAIWAN, STRIKINGLY wealthy and the Chinese world's first democracy, continues to be vexed on the world stage by mainland China -- the only China recognized by major powers. Taipei's goal of negotiating as equals with Beijing a resolution of their half-century conflict is stalled. China's recent shift from threatening the island to luring its business is paying big dividends, drawing billions in investment to the mainland and fostering greater economic allegiance on the island. Against that frustration comes Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian's inflammatory remarks last weekend in which he dared to speak the officially unspeakable: Taiwan and China are separate countries -- and the island should hold a referendum on independence.

A MEMORABLE PLACE Feeling at home in Taipei By Beth Snowberger SPECIAL TO THE SUN Last summer my parents came from our hometown of Westminster to visit me in my current home of Taipei, Taiwan. I came to Taipei to spend a year studying martial arts. That was three years ago. I found myself addicted to the sensation of learning new things every day without even trying. After a year of job-hopping, I landed a fun position teaching English at a Taipei university. My parents spent several days exploring the city, taking in the sights and smells of the dry-goods market, the sounds of chanting and firecrackers from the Taoist temple near my apartment, and the tastes of stir-fried clams with garlic and hot pepper.

TAIPEI, Taiwan - A delegation of Taiwanese military officers visited Washington this month and met with officials from several U.S. government agencies in the most extensive contact of its kind in more than two decades. The 20-member delegation, headed by air force Gen. Lin Yu-bao and comprising mainly majors and colonels, met with officials from the State Department, the National Security Council, intelligence agencies and the Pentagon during its 10-day stay in the nation's capital, participants said.

BEIJING - While Washington may view its decision to sell less-sophisticated arms to Taiwan as something of a compromise, analysts on both sides of the Taiwan Strait predicted this morning that the sales will exacerbate already strained Sino-U.S. relations. Although the United States deferred a decision to sell the Aegis radar system, Beijing will probably view the new package as further evidence that Washington intends to aggressively check China's ambitions in the region. "I think these arms sales to Taiwan will definitely have a negative impact on Sino-U.

WASHINGTON - Backing off from an option that could have irritated U.S.-China relations beyond their already tender state, President Bush has decided not to sell the sophisticated Aegis radar system and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to Taiwan, congressional and administration officials said last night. Instead, Bush has opted to sell Taiwan up to four less-advanced Kidd-class destroyers, which are not equipped to carry the Aegis, officials said. The president will also sell Taiwan up to 12 P-3 Orion anti-submarine aircraft and help it to purchase up to eight diesel submarines.

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan's foreign minister said yesterday that Taipei could accept a Bush administration decision not to sell the island warships equipped with the sophisticated Aegis weapons system. "It isn't the end of the world" if Washington decides not to include the Aegis system, which can detect and track more than 100 missiles, aircraft, surface vessels or submarines at a time, in the package of weapons it sells Taiwan, Tien Hung-mao said in an interview. "Aegis has been singled out as the weapon Taiwan has to have.

BEIJING - China criticized the inauguration speech of Taiwan's new president, Chen Shui-bian, yesterday but offered a possible way to defuse the tensions that have roiled the Taiwan Strait since summer. Despite calling Chen's address "vague" and "short of sincerity," the mainland suggested it might resume negotiations with Taipei if both sides returned to an earlier agreement on the sensitive issue of "One China." In a written statement, Beijing said it would like to renew talks if Taiwan adheres to a 1992 formula in which each government "will express in its own way orally that both sides across the Straits stick to the One China principle."

THE SOUND and the fury of the latest crisis over Taiwan, prompted by Beijing's recent "white paper" on the issue and Taiwan's election of a nominally pro-independence president, reveal how far Beijing, Taipei and Washington are from a mutual understanding of the fundamental issues at stake across the Taiwan Strait. All three sides are talking past each other, and none of them is addressing the core problem. Beijing, for example, is demanding negotiations on the basis of "one China," while Taipei is invoking self-determination and Washington is calling for peaceful resolution.

TAIPEI -- Rejecting threats from China, Taiwanese voters swept pro-independence candidate Chen Shui-bian into the presidency yesterday, breaking the Nationalist Party's half-century grip on power here and setting the stage for a possible showdown with Beijing. The victory of Chen's opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) over the Nationalists, or Kuomintang, completed one of Asia's great success stories of the past two decades: Taiwan's transition from an authoritarian nation to a genuine democracy.

TAIPEI -- Like his homeland, Johnny Y. C. Huang was jilted by the United States two decades ago. After 11 years running the local purchasing store for the U.S. Air Force here, he lost his job when Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. "The American government in 1979 abandoned me, because it had a legal wife in China," says Huang, 49, who is still fond of the United States, but likens the tangled ties between China, Taiwan and America to a love triangle. Of the United States' many relationships abroad, none is quite like the one it maintains with this island of more than 22 million people off the coast of China.