TAIPEI: Analysts say no matter who becomes Taiwan's next president, relations with China could remain tense for a long time. President Chen Shui-bian is running for a second four-year term in the March 20 election against opposition leader Lien Chan.

"In the past, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said Taiwan's unification with China was its only choice, but it has stopped saying so, so its stance on Taiwan-China ties has become similar to that of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

This has caused China to worry," Chiu Chao-lin, a researcher at the Institute of European and American Studies in Academia Sinica - Taiwan's most respected academic research institution.

"So if Lien wins, it does not mean immediate peace with China or the two sides can sit down and talk. China will observe him and find out what his policies are," she told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

If Chen wins re-election, Taiwan-China ties will be more strained because Chen has said he will amend the constitution in 2006 and implement it in 2008. China fears Chen will eventually seek independence for Taiwan, she said.

"As Taiwan's democracy moves forward, and Taiwan and China move further apart, China will tighten its grip on Taiwan and continue its zero-reconciliation game like barring Taiwan leaders from visiting foreign countries and persuading Taiwan's diplomatic allies to switch recognition to Beijing," she said.

Chiu believes the public's active participation in Taiwan's first-ever referendum will give the new president more bargaining chips, but Beijing will not easily give up.

"The point is not who wins the election, but how the new president will handle Taiwan-China ties. China regards Taiwan as its province and the whole world pretends the Republic of China (Taiwan's formal title) does not exist. After Taiwan's election, China must see what Taiwan people want," she said.

Chen, a Taiwan native, became president in 2000 after the pro- independence DPP beat the KMT which had held a five-decade-long grip on power. The KMT is made up mainly of mainlanders and used to favour Taiwan's eventual reunification with China.

Chen has angered China by shunning reunification with China - declaring Taiwan and China are "one country on each side of the Taiwan Strait" and calling for Taiwan's first-ever referendum along-side the presidential election.

Voters will be asked if Taiwan should increase its defence budget in response to China's missile threat, and if Taiwan should hold peace talks with China. Since the answers are obvious, China suspects Chen will eventually seek Taiwan's independence through plebiscite.

But some analysts believe Taiwan-China tension will ease if KMT leader Lien Chan wins the election. Lien, son of a Taiwan father and mainland-Chinese mother, said Taiwan and China should put aside political issues to discuss economic cooperation like opening sea and air links. He said he would visit China after he is elected to ask China to remove the missiles facing Taiwan and discuss cooperation.

A China expert with a leading Taiwan newspaper said no matter who won the election the new leader would tackle practical issues like promoting trade with China and opening sea and air links.

"If Lien wins, normalization will come earlier," he said, asking not to be named. "Unlike former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, the current Chinese leadership is not in a hurry to recover Taiwan, so long as Taipei does not change its status quo," he said.

After the People's Republic of China replaced the Republic of China in the United Nations in 1971, most countries dropped Taipei to recognize Beijing. Currently only 27, mostly small nations, recognize Taiwan.

But Taiwan's democracy and economic success have won praise from many countries. With only 23 million people and few natural resources, the island is the world's 14th-largest trading nation and holds the world's third-largest foreign currency reserves after Japan and China - 214.9 billion U.S. dollars by the end of January.

In 1993, Taiwan and China held their first dialogue in Singapore and later conducted a dozen talks under the dialogue's framework to discuss legal disputes, fishing quarrels and the deportation of Chinese plane hijackers and job seekers.

But China halted the talks in 1995 to retaliate against former Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui's visiting the US and stressing Taiwan was a sovereign state.

Taiwan has urged China to re-open the talks, but China insists Taipei must first accept the "one China principle" which says there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China. Taiwan has rejected the demand. -dpa