China's show of force against Taiwan, an emerging democracy that China considers a renegade province, is doing nothing to improve the image of the giant nation in the eyes of the world.
China wants to be considered a major political and economic power. But its billions of citizens and their buying and producing potential can't negate China's compulsion to terrorize its own people and flex its muscle against its tiny neighbor.China's decision to conduct war games with live ammunition just off Taiwan's shores is an overt threat against Taiwanese voters who go to the polls March 23.
China has drawn the proverbial line in the sand and is daring the United States and Taiwan to cross it. U.S. warships from the 7th Fleet are now staked out in international waters around Taiwan. Secretary of State Warren Christopher has said the warships are ready to "be helpful, if they need to be."
It's a tense situation, but no one is likely to cross that line in the sand. There is too much at stake economically. Taiwan has become the United States' seventh largest trading partner since Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist government retreated to the island in 1949.
China's economy, too, has boomed in recent years, and China and Taiwan have multibillion-dollar trade activity.
But Taiwan understandably does not want to reunify with China as long as the country is a communist regime that uses intimidation, exile and imprisonment to keep its people under domination.
The United States must remain on the Taiwan side of that line in the sand and hope that China realizes erasing it is the only way it will be recognized as part of the mainstream of nations.