LONDON -- Taiwan's transition to democracy is complete. On Saturday, after half a century of rule by the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), the offshore island's 15 million voters elected a president from the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, Chen Shui-bian. "I feel very, very badly about this," said the defeated KMT candidate, Lien Chan. "I hope he will govern carefully."

Lien is worried about Chen (or pretends he is) because the DPP has a history of advocating Taiwan's formal independence from China. The Communist regime on the mainland has always said it would use military force if Taiwan ever dropped the fiction that there is only one China (albeit with two separate governments), and recently it has been issuing bloodcurdling threats to invade Taiwan if Chen won. But that was just bluster; the real question is when democracy will come to the rest of China.

The invasion threats are empty because China has never built up the naval capacity to transport an army across the 190 km of ocean that separates Taiwan from the mainland, and to land it on defended beaches. That requires highly specialized types of vessel that China has never built in the necessary numbers, plus a general capability for sea control that it also lacks. The People's Republic of China cannot invade Taiwan.