Free China’s president, Lai Ching-te, is giving the mandarins at Beijing the fantods by stressing Taiwan’s independence ahead of his country’s National Day on Thursday. Mr. Lai, as head of state of the Republic of China, is a successor to the founder of Chinese democracy, Sun Yat-sen, a New York Sun correspondent, who toppled the Manchus in 1912. Mr. Lai’s republic, he reminds Xi Jinping, predates the Communist regime Mao proclaimed in 1949.