This could be interesting.

President Chen Shui-bian said Taiwan will press ahead with a controversial referendum on whether the self-ruled island should apply for U.N. membership under the name Taiwan, dismissing U.S. objections as appeasement of China.

Chen's defiant stand, outlined in frank language during an interview Friday, raised the prospect of a rocky period in Taiwan's relations with the Bush administration and a rise in tension across the volatile 100-mile strait separating Taiwan from mainland China.

China and the United States have complained that the referendum, which would have little practical effect, in fact is designed to promote a change in the island's official name, from Republic of China to Taiwan. This, both governments charged, could be read as a unilateral change in the island's status, something China's leaders have said they will not tolerate.

The island has been called the Republic of China since Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces fled here after being defeated by the Communists of Mao Zedong in 1949. China has said the island must one day reunite with the mainland and has vowed to use force if necessary to prevent a decisive move toward independence -- such as changing the official name to Taiwan.

But Chen, an ardent independence advocate who is nearing the end of his second four-year term, said the idea of such a referendum has been endorsed by the main opposition group, the Nationalist Party, as well as his own People's Progressive Party and was supported by 71 percent of Taiwanese citizens questioned in a national poll. Canceling the plans would amount to frustrating the democratic rights of Taiwan's 23 million people to express their views and guide government policies, he said.

"The path we have embarked on is the right one, and we shall continue to follow it," he declared.

Frankly, the US should be supporting this referendum, not opposing it. It recognizes a fundamental reality for over a half century -- the separation of Taiwan from China and its existence of an independent, free nation and not a part of the Red Chinese hegemony. Indeed, our failure to support and recognize Taiwanese independence is a betrayal of our own heritage as a nation that broke free of oppressors and grasped independence with both hands.

The free nations of the world need to make it clear to the Red Chinese that any attempt to prevent Taiwanese independence will be met with a strong response -- and that an attack on Taiwan will be treated as an attack on the homeland of every freedom-living nation.