Our favorite moment in the visit of President Hu to the White House yesterday came when the announcer said the band would play the “national anthem of the Republic of China,” a reference, of course, not to the Communist Party dictatorship in Beijing but to the Free Chinese government on Taiwan. No doubt our enjoyment of the blunder stems from a streak in our thinking that sees the ideal resolution to the China problem as a restitution of the Republic of China’s suzerainty on the mainland. We understand that time has passed that idea by, at least in its original form, since the members of the Legislative Yuan who sat in Taipei while representing provinces from across from the Formosa Strait in what came to be communist China have died off. And it’s not what the Taiwanese want anyhow. Increasingly, they see themselves as Taiwanese, and their primary identity is with democracy, rather than a China run by the heirs of Mao and Stalin. But it’s nice to be reminded, even by a blunder, of the idea of Free China.

One of the things to keep in mind about China, after all, is that for all China’s problems, they are no more daunting than those faced by the government of Taiwan. No one is about to attack the mainland, after all. Few are refusing to recognize it, and everyone is willing to trade with it, sell it oil, and in all too many cases weapons. It gets to vote China’s seat in what’s left of the United Nations. Its diplomats are treated with dignity, even by those who can’t remember the name of the country when it comes time for the national anthem. And, China has a free hand to imprison its dissidents, arrest employees of American news organizations, lock up religious people labor activists, and eradicate neighboring cultures in Tibet and East Turkistan.

Taiwan, on the other hand, has none of these “advantages” enjoyed by Communist China, but it has managed nevertheless to complete a transition to democracy and become a trading nation whose importance far exceeds the size of its population. Its performance as an American ally in the region has been remarkable given the isolation it endures as a result of an antiquated “One China” policy that denies a Democratic country of 23 million people recognition. It is this policy that mistakenly interprets Taiwan’s increasingly separate identity as provocative to China rather than a well earned right to self-determination and a staunch commitment to its democratic future. It may yet be a tragedy if the world, led by America, fails to recognize that the key to deterring Chinese aggression against Taiwan is in embracing Taiwan and integrating it into the international community to no less a degree than the People’s Republic.

America expends enormous political capital during visits like that of General Secretary Hu. Quite frequently, China benefits at the expense of Taiwan. Today at the White House, President Bush warned both parties against “confrontational or provocative acts.” In the case of the Communists, the confrontation involves an enormous arsenal of missiles aimed at Taiwan. The coming weeks will be full of analysis of what it achieved, or more likely what it did not, beyond its purchase of Boeing airplanes. As it considers Mr. Hu’s visit the American China relationship more broadly, the Bush administration would be wise to consider whether the problem of Taiwan doesn’t offer a solution to the problem of China. That would be worth of a state dinner.