Opinion polls have been banned for the last 10 days of the Taiwan presidential election campaign, so it is difficult to predict the outcome of today's voting, or to gauge whether the bellicose warnings from China against any move towards independence have dissuaded electors from backing the pro-independence candidate, Chen Shuibian.
All we know for sure is that this most successful and stable of Asian democracies is in for a very uncertain future. There are three candidates, all running neck and neck: Mr Chen for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Vice-President Lien Chan of the ruling Nationalist Party, and breakaway Nationalist candidate, James Soong. For the first time the Nationalist Party, which has ruled Taiwan for more than five decades, could be unseated.
The Nationalist Party, also known as the Kuomintang, was founded in 1894 in China by Sun Yat-sen with the aim of ending imperial rule, and it helped topple China's last (Qing) dynasty in 1911. When the Republic of China was established in 1912, it won a leadership role in government, but in 1936 it was forced into alliance with the Communists against the invading Japanese.
After the Japanese surrender at the end of the second World War civil war broke out, which ended in 1949 with victory for Mao Zedong's Communist forces and the flight of the Nationalist army under Chiang Kai-chek into exile in Taiwan. The Nationalists ruled Taiwan in the early years as a military garrison, suppressing dissent and press freedom, but after Chiang's death in 1975, economic and political reforms were introduced.
Martial law was lifted in 1987. President Lee Teng-hui held the first democratic presidential election in 1996, in which he won a 54 per cent victory. Some interpreted this as a vote of defiance in the face of Chinese missile firings - designed to warn Taiwan against any drift towards independence - but there was in fact no serious opposition to the Nationalist hold on power.
Today's crisis began bubbling up last year when President Lee, who retires next month, tried to halt the decline in support for his party by declaring that relations between Taiwan and mainland China should be treated on a special "state-to-state" basis. This seriously challenged China's claim that Taiwan is not a state but a renegade province which one day soon must return to the motherland, and it scuppered tentative cross-strait talks on future relations.
As the 2000 election campaign got under way in February, Beijing issued a White Paper on Taiwan which upped the ante. It repeated the three conditions under which it said Beijing would take military action against the island of 22 million people - a declaration of independence, invasion by a third country, or internal turmoil - but added a fourth: undue delay in entering serious unification talks.
The big question now is what difference a new Taiwanese leader will make.
Whoever wins, the first priority of an incoming administration will be to stabilise relations with Beijing, but their policies on China differ only in emphasis and offer little hope of rapprochement.
Mr Chen, who has a solid base among the native Taiwan majority, has in the past given vocal support to independence. He defines Taiwan as a sovereign independent country, and says any change to the status quo should be decided by the Taiwanese people. However, he has softened his position during the campaign, and says he has no plans for a referendum, or to declare independence or to change the name of the country to the Republic of Taiwan, any of which would ignite the fuse of war.
He will ease a ban on the so-called three links with the mainland - direct trade, transport, and postal services - and push for full normalisation of ties with Beijing. Mr Lien, for his part, supports the special state-to-state relationship and says fullblown political negotiations can start as soon as Beijing recognises Taipei as a political equal. He suggests a peace zone in the Taiwan Strait, an easing of the ban on the three links, and a hotline between Beijing and Taipei.
However, the Kuomintang nominee says he will only discuss unification after China embraces Western-style democracy, and then without any timetable. Mr Soong split with the Kuomintang when he was passed over as its presidential candidate and is seen as the softest of the three on China. He defines ties with Beijing as a "quasi-international relationship under relative sovereignty" and proposes signing a 30-year peace treaty after which the two sides could form an EU-type union, something China would never accept.
He says easing the ban on the three links will be inevitable if both entities join the World Trade Organisation in the coming months. All three candidates have rejected China's offer of autonomy under the "one country - two systems" arrangement applied to Hong Kong and Macau, which would allow Taiwan to keep its flag and army; they say Taiwan is a functioning democracy and not a former colony.
The presidential candidates reflect a growing force in Taiwan society, a growing sense of a Taiwanese rather than Chinese identity. The most recent survey of public opinion shows that 60 per cent of people wish to maintain the current status quo - neither independence nor reunification - while 13 per cent want reunification and 9 per cent favour independence.
The voters know that declaring independence is not an option. Not only would it guarantee war, the United States would not tolerate it. US Defence Secretary William Cohen said in Japan on Thursday that Taiwan should not seek independence and if it did the United States would not support it.
The purpose of the Chinese White paper and the subsequent ratcheting up of the threats of force by Beijing are designed to impress upon the Taiwanese people that procrastination is not an option either. The question this leaves is: what happens if Beijing makes an aggressive move against Taiwan in the coming months if the new president does not knuckle under?
UNDER the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, Washington is obliged to support Taiwan if attacked, on the basis that a threat to Taiwan would be a matter of "grave concern" to the US and would be considered a threat to the peace and security of the western Pacific. It also allows weapons sales for defence, though Chinese political pressure has prevented the US from training the Taiwanese military in complex weapons systems, and has caused the Clinton administration to hesitate to sell Taiwan four guided missile destroyers with advanced radar to reinforce its ageing naval fleet.
The US does not believe that China has the capacity to overcome Taiwan. Admiral Dennis Blair, head of US forces in the Pacific, said earlier this month that China still lacked the military might to take Taiwan and hold it. "That's the military reality underlying where we are right now," he said.
The PLA China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) is six times the size of Taiwan's forces, but it does not have a large enough transport fleet to ferry an invasion force across the Taiwan Strait, and its inferior air force would come under attack from Taiwan's 150 F16s, 60 French Mirage 2000s and its batteries of advanced Patriot missiles. Taiwan has also installed formidable obstacles to invasion: landmines on the beaches, heavy artillery, and reinforced bunkers. This assumes that the PLA would make a frontal assault. But high-tech weaponry is rapidly changing the strategic balance in the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan has no protection against cruise missiles.
The likely Chinese invasion tactic now would be a pre-emptive missile strike, followed by airborne landings in the Taiwan interior. China is believed to have an arsenal of 1,000 missiles pointed at Taiwan, including short-range ballistic missiles and long-range cruise missiles, which could be used even now in a massive exercise in intimidation, much more serious than during the March 1996 election when China fired M9 ballistic missiles near Taiwan's main ports.
China may gamble that the United States would be unwilling to react to a limited strike, with missiles aimed at targets on land or at shipping lanes. Aggressive action could also involve information warfare - using computer viruses and electromagnetic pulses to cripple communications.
The price China would pay would be diplomatic isolation and economic chaos, and if military action failed, the possibility of a domestic upheaval in Beijing. This is why most analysts say it will not come to war in the foreseeable future.
But make no mistake about it: China is serious. After getting back Hong Kong and Macau, Taiwan is the only unfinished national business, and it is whipping up nationalist sentiment at home. The problem for Beijing is that if its blitzkrieg of words fails, it will have talked itself into a corner, and find itself forced to take action or lose face. And the latter is not an option.
