It was no great surprise to us when the young student we were talking with began describing China as a large chicken. Frankly our Mandarin skills were such that progressing the conversation to this point had seemed a linguistic triumph. The true meaning had presumably been lost somewhere in a tangle of tones and unlearnt vocab.

The young man, in the last grade of primary school, began to draw. The now familiar shape of the map of China quickly emerged, from the long curved eastern coast to the hefty chunk of Central Asia that makes up the outer provinces. Hainan and, of course, Taiwan, were incorporated in the south east of the map.

A few pen strokes more and Manchuria in the north east gained an eye and a beak. Two spindly legs stretched from the mainland to the islands in the south east, which also grew some claws. And there we had it: the People's Republic of China, a giant chook, balancing its bulk on Taiwan.

You hear quite a lot about Taiwan in the People's Republic. Taipei is always in the weather reports. There are cheery and appropriate couplets at the Chinese New Year's Eve variety gala, just as for every province. TV programs describe the unique flora of the island. Conversely, the attention is not disproportionate. Taiwan is just one amongst many provinces, each with their special attractions and problems. There's many things you don't hear about Taiwan, as well. Taiwanese newspapers and institutions are one of the relatively few sites and subjects seriously censored on the Internet.

For the reasons above I can't be sure of the precise day to day story locals get about Taiwan, of how much detail they hear of Chen Shui-bian and his compatriots. I'm not even sure exactly what they're taught about Taiwan in school. They study a lot of national history; colonialism, the downfall of the Qing dynasty, the war against Japan, the defeat and exile of the Guomindang. They study a lot of everything. Highschool students happily volunteer opinions on Taiwan very close to the official line. They seem quite sincere. Nationalism is heady fertilizer to grow a brain on.

To me, it's that historical narrative, of national unity and independence, that makes Taiwan so compelling to the Chinese leadership. Imperial China of the 19th century was in the unusual position of being both coloniser and colonised. The technological gap between China and the colonial, naval powers was mirrored by the decisive advantage in warfare China gained in Central Asia. The Qing Emperors finally consolidated their hold on the western frontier just as European pressure was generating treaty ports and Opium Wars. This crashed headlong into World War II, the war against Japan, and the civil war. China spent a century being torn apart by foreign powers and local warlords, before decisively reunifying under the People Republic. And the last enemy of that reunification was the Guomindang, entrenched in the former Japanese colony of Taiwan. Hong Kong and Macau are now back in the fold, and aggressive Han migration to Xinjiang and Tibet has woven the western provinces more closely into the nation. The obvious closing chapter of that shared national narrative is a return of Taiwan to the motherland.

It's not the only narrative available by any means. During the turbulent period of the Republic of China, and before World War II, Russia supported the secession of the province of Outer Mongolia, so it could gain a proxy state in the east, modern Mongolia. (Inner Mongolia failed in its secession and remains a province.) Mongolia, again, had been a Chinese frontier, and only completely conquered during the Qing. The completeness of this secession, demographics, and Great Power backing all meant that when the People's Republic was founded in 1949 the Communist Party chose to treat their new landlocked neighbour as a settled border. The nation of Mongolia was a done deal, with the lucky Mongolians managing to avoid decades of Maoist oppression, at the cost of enduring decades of reheated Stalinist oppression.

Until recently, the Taiwanese leadership shared the Chinese Communist vision of national reunification, and reinforced the One China narrative. The autocratic governments of the Guomindang retained seats in parliament for the mainland provinces. The rather delicate foundation for the diplomatic talks between Beijing and Taipei was "One government on both sides of the Taiwan strait"; in other words, both sides wanted to run the whole show. The new generation of Taiwanese democrats, including President Chen Shui-bian, are more focused on rights of self-determination. Regional self-government as a virtue in itself is a relatively new idea in Chinese political philosophy, and one in violent opposition to the One China framework of the PRC.

The Communist Party has tied Taiwan very closely to the national myth; there's little room for redrafting. Today's Chinese state is coherent and booming - it's not the fragmented disorder of the Republic. Hanging on so tightly to Taiwan makes it hard to accommodate any alternative approach without implicitly accepting self-determination, or its sibling, democracy. But once the principle is established, the entire narrative begins to unravel. If Taiwan, only returned to Chinese (Republican) control after World War II, was a crucial historic part of China, and it could separate, why not the Uighurs of the north-west, or the Tibetans of the south-west?

The projected solution to this bind is autonomy along the lines of the cities of Hong Kong and Macau. The crucial difference between those post-colonial settlements and Taiwan is 50 years of self-government backed by indigenous military force.  That's an almost textbook definition of a nation-state, and it's not something to be yielded easily. To resolve the issue by treaty seems to require a newer piece of legal fiction, a supra-national entity, a Chinese Union, where Taiwan gained a flag but kept its government, its military, and its sovereignty.

The Taiwanese leadership are restive at the legal limbo of their country, and there are various projected plans for declaring independence, in the expectation of Great Power backing. Though it's clear which side principles of self-determination would put them on, rich world diplomats sound almost queasy at the prospect. A flag and a passport seems a slim reward for the comprehensive carnage of serious hostilities across the Taiwan Strait. The leadership of the People's Republic of China, for their part, periodically make clear that this island off the coast, which their laws and their armies do not control, is a place they will wage frenzied war to have. Their schooling should have taught them they'd be shooting themselves in the foot.

It occurred to me that a grand contribution to NaCFCWriMo would be a democratic Chinese constitution. Alas, no sooner did it occur to me than I realised what an overwhelmingly difficult task it would be. 1.3 billion people, 23 provinces (more or less), 5 autonomous regions, 57 years of communist rule, regional GDP per capita that ranges from Portugal to Kyrgystan, environmental and demographic problems, a colelction of scary border and sovereignty disputes, and the world's oldest continuous bureaucratic tradition. The only way to govern such a massive and diverse polity is surely with a very light central hand and a lot of regional leeway; but to offer such leeway is to risk the less eager provinces, such as Tibet, declaring independence, a result which would enrage the nationalist majority.

Working with existing constitutional arrangements is also difficult; in many ways they are still works in progress. Deng Xiaoping, for instance, though widely acknowledged in his time as China's political leader, never held the Presidency or Premiership. Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao seem to have settled into Head of State / Head of Government roles in public, but the actual mechanisms and everyday policy decisions remain murky manoeverings amongst party commitees. The PRC does have a parliament, which could be given teeth instead of a rubber stamp.

Looking for inspiration in the constitutional arrangements of the Republic of China (nowadays Taiwan), the explicit document from 1928 is an interesting one, containing Five Branches of Government , including one for examining civil servants. However the constitutional arrangements in practice have been rather turbulent ones, with the constitution being suspended in Taiwan from 1947 to 1988, and progressive local parties considering it now rather out of date. Seeing as it was written with the land mass of late Qing dynasty China in mind, including claims to now independent (Outer) Mongolia, you can see their point.

Given all this, and though I remain confident in future government of, for and by the Chinese people, I have left a democratic constitution as an exercise for the alert reader, and simply changed the front page poll .

Looks like Taiwanese President, Chen Shui-bian, said that Taiwan's constitution should be modified to make Taiwan a 'normal' and 'complete' nation . China will not like that.

Adam had an excellent article on the Chinese-Taiwanese relationship titled: The Amputated Chicken :

Until recently, the Taiwanese leadership shared the Chinese Communist vision of national reunification, and reinforced the One China narrative. The autocratic governments of the Guomindang retained seats in parliament for the mainland provinces. The rather delicate foundation for the diplomatic talks between Beijing and Taipei was "One government on both sides of the Taiwan strait"; in other words, both sides wanted to run the whole show. The new generation of Taiwanese democrats, including President Chen Shui-bian, are more focused on rights of self-determination. Regional self-government as a virtue in itself is a relatively new idea in Chinese political philosophy, and one in violent opposition to the One China framework of the PRC.

The Communist Party has tied Taiwan very closely to the national myth; there's little room for redrafting. Today's Chinese state is coherent and booming - it's not the fragmented disorder of the Republic. Hanging on so tightly to Taiwan makes it hard to accommodate any alternative approach without implicitly accepting self-determination, or its sibling, democracy.

In a letter to the Taipei Times Lee Yen-mou argues that it is silly to hold a vote on whether the Republic of China [ROC] should be named Taiwan at the United Nations as the constitution calls the country ROC - not Taiwan. Instead, Yen-mou, argues for the constitution to be changed to call the country Taiwan, in order to give the name consistency and legitimacy.

That is an argument around the constitution providing national identity, and where it contradicts popular sentiment, it weakens the power of both.

Yen-mou argues that there should be a democratic display that the national name is Taiwan, not ROC, and the laws and constitution be amended to reflect that.

It would be ridiculous for us to use the name "ROC" internally, but "Taiwan" externally. A powerful, meaningful and necessary step is to demonstrate that "Taiwan" is our country's name.

The people of Taiwan must express their desire through a democratic referendum or other legal means that can demonstrate our view that we are Taiwan.

With that done, laws and the Constitution can be amended to change our name. This way we might succeed in winning enough international support for our country's name and our country's right to representation within the UN.

In conclusion, the obstacle is not just that China is blocking us, and not just that there is no sufficient support abroad for the issue.

The problem is that we must first change the name of our country to "Taiwan."

In realpolitik terms Taiwan is in a difficult place. They have transitioned to liberal democracy and have been a trading-state far longer than China has, but power is power in realpolitik, and China has more of it than Taiwan.

China is yet to discover how bad war/conflict and political instability are for business. Courtesy of Deming and Statistical Process Control [SPC] a factory is independent of any regional factors. Factories in China can be ripped up and put in southern Mexico, or India, or Indonesia; there will be a capital cost, but SPC guarantees that quality won't suffer.

Americans won't notice that the trinkets they are buying in Walmart are no longer made in China, and instead are coming from Indonesia. It is the nature of global trade.

More reading on China and Taiwan:

• The Amputated Chicken
• Trading Uranium For Chinese Technology
• Dreadful, Positively Painful

Lin Chia-lung argues for Taiwan to become a normal country that the "country's official name must be changed, a new constitution must be written, transitional justice must be taken care of and Taiwan-centered consciousness must be established." Lin is arguing for Taiwanese nationalism. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) seems to be heavily for a rewriting of the Taiwanese constitution but I cannot find any details of what that 'rewriting' would entail.

There is this curious tidbit, "President Chen Shui-bian has repeated his belief in the need to make a new constitution to enhance Taiwan's competitiveness." Not sure whether he is arguing for political competitiveness or economic competitiveness, or whether it is just a translation issue.

This op-ed by Huang Jei-hsuan suggests that it may be economic competitiveness through democratic organisation:

A new constitution would be indispensable in ridding Taiwan of the rampant neo-colonialism that is sapping the nation's vitality through internal division.

Specifically, a new constitution, that at least defines the nation's territories, would make it clear to the future generations of Taiwanese just who they are and where their loyalty should reside. This would go a long way to counter the confusion the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), through its half-century of colonial rule, sought to sow in the mind of the Taiwanese public. Taiwan's ultimate survival depends on that clarity.

So it appears a significant number of Taiwanese see modernisation through nationalism and independence. There does appear to be genuine desire for increased democratic forms of organisation and less authoritarian "Chinese" politics. Eddy Chang and Lin Ya-ti write:

Taiwan's political mechanisms have sadly not yet been freed of the "greater China" ideology and its authoritarian tradition. To solve Taiwan's constitutional predicament, the real issue is not what part of the Constitution to amend. A new constitution is necessary, written by Taiwanese for Taiwanese and consistently democratic.

The Constitution is beyond hope. It couldn't be fixed by the past seven amendments and certainly can't be fixed by Ma. Amendments are tiny changes, temporary patches to win votes rather than part of a long-term strategy to build a Taiwanese constitution.

Power politics are the international currency in political relationships and China is rising power in this area. Taiwan is going to have a tough time of it, but if they seek an increasingly democratic constitution that represents their political interests and desires - then good on them.