HONOLULU -- "No surprises." This was one of the pledges Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian made to Washington, both at the time of his inauguration and again after his Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, made a better-than-expected showing in the December 2001 parliamentary elections and formed a virtual alliance with the even more independence-prone Taiwan Solidarity Union (which looks to former President Lee Teng-hui for guidance and inspiration).
From the onset, Chen seemed fully aware of the damage that his predecessor's surprise "special state-to-state" description of China-Taiwan relations had inflicted on Taipei's relations with Washington during the Clinton administration. "This would not happen again," Chen seemed to be promising.
Well, here we go again. Chen's assertion last Saturday (in a video-conference address to the World Association of Taiwanese Associations in Tokyo) that "it must be clearly distinguished that both Taiwan and China are a country on either side of the strait" and, even more provocatively, that Taiwan's future should be decided by a referendum -- a long-recognized Chinese "red line" that Chen had previously pledged not to seek -- seemed to come as a surprise, not only to Washington and Beijing, but even to many of Chen's advisers and supporters.