I recently asked an Asian diplomat with experience in Beijing his region's $64 trillion question: How do China's aged Leninist leaders expect to cling to power in a rapidly modernizing, socially fragmenting country? "They don't," he shot back instantly. "They are busy facing up to how and when to go, not if. They are not fools."

As evidence he cited specific cases known to the intelligence services of his country and of the United States of senior Chinese officials who have planted their children or other relatives abroad with huge bank accounts to maintain. The officials preserve the option of fleeing or trying to shoot it out again when the moment comes, this diplomat speculated.
After last weekend, the truth about China is hidden in plain sight: Jiang Zemin and his cohorts now run only slightly ahead of the tides of change that will make their Communist rule history. The fear of being swamped has already overtaken the leadership in Beijing, shaping its current erratic behavior toward the United States and Taiwan.

Beijing's self-damaging, crude threats over Taiwan's elections on Saturday have distracted the Clinton administration, which treats the thrilling reaffirmation of Taiwan's commitment to democracy as a dangerous burden instead of the act of liberation it is.
Taiwan's choice of the Democratic Progressive Party's Chen Shui-bian as president liberates Chinese and American politics from the darkest shadows of a tainted past. Beijing's Politburo is more of a relic than ever following the island's rejection of continued rule by the Nationalist Party installed there in 1949 by Chiang Kai-shek.

Taiwan's voters have in one stroke deprived the Communists of their historical enemy and of any justification for continuing to deny the mainland population fundamental human rights. What should become the final page in China's civil war was turned on Saturday. Chen's victory over two candidates who split the Nationalist vote gives Taiwan new standing in global politics.
No wonder Beijing is so nervous that it lashes out with bloodthirsty threats that damage its immediate chances to get normal trading relations with the United States put on a permanent footing, and to defeat enhanced U.S. security assistance for Taiwan.
Both matters are now before Congress, which should focus on the sweeping historic change the election introduces to the region, as it examines the technical details of the trade and security legislation.

The vote is a cleansing experience for Taiwan. Chen takes office on May 20 untarred by the Nationalist Party's record under Generalissimo Chiang and his immediate heirs of corruption, warlordism and tyranny.

Chen will still have to deal with a parliamentary Nationalist Party majority after his inauguration, as well as Beijing's belligerency. Both factors will push him toward caution. But whatever he does in office, Chen has carved out his political identity and his electoral mandate on the basis of supporting democracy and independence for the island and of opposing corruption.
This suggests that Beijing's own galloping official corruption--pointed out in the convincing accounts by the Asian diplomat and many others of offshore secret bank accounts--no longer can be deflected or justified by accusing Taiwan of being the same or worse.

The presidential election thus shreds any claim to moral superiority by the Chinese Communists, who have used such pretensions with some effect to deny Taiwan international support over the past half-century. Having the Nationalist Party in full power obscured the corrupt and cruel nature of Communist rule.

Beijing underlined how much the Politburo will miss the Nationalist Party by indicating immediately after the election that it intends to bypass Chen and deal instead with defeated candidate James Soong, who seeks to gather the pieces of the party and make it a modern party. In its frustration and anger, Beijing seems to be moving toward a Three China policy, based on the past instead of the future.

Taiwan's second consecutive free and fair presidential election brings a subtle clarification to American politics as well. Support for Taiwan's right to self-determination no longer carries with it the aura of red-baiting right-wing extremism that characterized the original China Lobby of William Knowland, Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon.

Liberals, moderates and conservatives share common cause in supporting Taiwan's modern, open society and its determination not to be "absorbed" overnight into Communist China, as colonial remnants Hong Kong and Macao were. There is no reason to stint on that support.

Today's China lobby is driven by U.S. corporations, which are frequently asked by Beijing for bribes in the form of money, technology transfers or political groveling. They invest in the past, even as it disappears before their eyes.