President Lee of the Republic of China (Taiwan) had set off all the alarm bells, Mr. Buckley begins by telling us, when he spoke "of the looming need to deal with Taiwan as a separate diplomatic entity from China. This statement caused apoplectic denunciations in Peking, and apoplectic denunciations in Washington, the nostalgic fiction having endured for fifty years that Taiwan and China are a single country." This proves to be a low-key but highly informative discussion of the local history, parallels elsewhere (e.g., East and West Germany, North and South Korea), and future possibilities. WL: "The overwhelming majority of the Taiwan people--every poll shows 80 to 85 per cent prefer the status quo. Some of those say, 'Status quo indefinitely,' some of them say, 'Status quo and then some day maybe reunification,' some say, 'Status quo and some day independence,' But what they recognize is they have de facto independence.... Why try to make it de jure and be provocative?"