While China huffs and puffs and threatens military action against Taiwan over its moves towards independence, a powerful force from the breakaway province has already arrived in Beijing and conquered the masses.
It is just over five feet high, weighs 110 pounds, wears a skintight black halter top and bell-bottoms, and goes by the name of AMei.
An impish pop diva, A-Mei has taken communist China by storm with sexually suggestive performances and a powerful, silky voice. Last week 60,000 people crowded into Beijing's soccer stadium for a sell-out concert which created a sensation in the Chinese capital. Tickets costing the equivalent of £160, a small fortune to an average Chinese teenager, were snapped up at higher prices on the black market and many of the cheaper ones were sold before they were printed.
The normally staid official press carried rave reviews and splashed pictures of the black-haired "Madonna of Asia" on their front pages, displacing stories about job opportunities and harvest statistics.
Numerous web sites have proliferated to provide Chinese fans with information and chat rooms about A-Mei, whose real name is Chang Huei Mei. They learn that she is 27, is a Catholic, speaks four languages, has eight brothers and sisters, has a black belt in taekwondo, plays golf and is nicknamed the "tear princess".
While the gulf widens between the political leaders of China and Taiwan, A-Mei's wild reception in Beijing - she was even mobbed by airport staff when she arrived at Capital Airport - illustrates an opposite trend, especially among young people.
Everything Taiwanese has become all the rage in China, from pop singers to soap operas. Beijing youths affect cool Taiwanese accents and inhabit all-night Taiwanese fast-food restaurants. The Taiwan-produced television ser ial, Huanzhu, the Emperor's Daughter, is on a second run of its 48 episodes on Chinese television.
Before the mid-1980s, cultural contacts and trade exchanges were all but prohibited, but today 42,500 Taiwan companies do business on the mainland, and the Chinese economy has boomed with the help of $40 billion (£30 billion) in Taiwanese investment.
Now the energy and exuberance of A-Mei has caught the imagination of a new generation of Chinese popular music lovers, with songs like Bad Boy, Give Me Feeling, So You Don't Want Anything and Are You Ready?
"Raise your hands," cried AMei to the audience in Beijing and a forest of hands reached up from the stadium. "Louder!" she called out in her slightly rasping voice and the applause thundered over the heads of 2,000 armed police deployed under a sign on the electronic scoreboard urging fans to "Observe discipline, maintain order". A-Mei danced around the stage with a fluid, rhythmic grace. The crowd went wild when she brought up a squirming young man from the audience, tied his hands together with a whip, and taunted him with a mock sadomasochistic act, as she belted out, Don't Lie To Me, a song about how a woman needs to control her man.
"The music world on the mainland has become stodgy because the composers are getting old and they can't keep up with new songs suitable for youngsters," said music critic Jin Zhaojun of the Beijing Youth Daily. "Therefore young audiences in the mainland have to seek their role models in Taiwan and Hong Kong. I do believe that the appearance of A-Mei marks the birth of a new generation."
Political dialogue between Beijing and Taipei has been suspended over a recent decision by President Lee of Taiwan to pursue a "two-states" rather than a "one China" policy, but President Jiang Zemin of China evidently sees many benefits in the continuation of cultural and economic ties, especially when they promote a rapport between the two populations which suggests that unification is logical and inevitable.
Separated when Nationalists fled to the island after the communists swept across mainland China in 1948, the two entities are united by language, culture and tradition, and many Taiwanese have relatives in China's Fujian province.
There are risks however for the Chinese authorities, whose rating with pop fans was underlined by a chorus of boos when A-Mei concluded her concert by thanking the ministry of culture and the Beijing city council.
Another, unnamed, critic was quoted in the Beijing Youth Daily as saying: "From the body of this vigorous girl, from the little bit of confusion and the wild nature in her eyes, we can see the characteristics of the present era. She is not the type of person who is full of tenderness for the old era, but is straight, self-confident and dauntless." A-Mei's song, the critic concluded, "is a voice of freedom from the mountain forest". The Taiwanese singer's ability to influence the masses in other respects has also been recognised by capitalist interests. Coca-Cola has signed up A-Mei to promote its soft drink, Sprite.
Six weeks after the first TV advertisements were aired, the company claimed that consumers were doubly aware of the brand and sales had shot up.