China has not rattled one saber about a U.S. stopover by Taipei’s leader. The U.S. ought to curb the visit.

Don’t look now, but there may be a new foreign policy maturity emanating from Beijing. Consider the reaction last week of the People’s Republic of China to the latest, potentially troublemaking move by Taiwan. It was not thunderous.

Quietly last December, Taipei informed the Clinton administration that President Lee Teng-hui would be requesting permission for his jetliner to stop overnight in Honolulu on its way to and from Panama next month. The last time Washington allowed Lee in for a visit, Beijing blew its top, complaining bitterly that the high-profile trip implicitly blurred the spirit of the “one China” principle ratified by three Sino-U.S. communiques inked by U.S. presidents of both the Republican and Democratic ilk. Then, weeks before Taiwan’s first presidential election in March 1996, Beijing went ballistic. Enraged over Taiwan’s perceived campaign of clever resistance to the process of eventual unification, Beijing fired missiles into international waters off Taiwan’s coast. Alarmed that matters might get out of hand, President Clinton dispatched aircraft carriers to the region to pipe down Beijing and calm everyone’s nerves.

Why is the Chinese government so ultratouchy about Taiwan’s every move? It’s hard for many of us in the West to understand, but Beijing, as well as a lot of Chinese everywhere (and more than a few people inside Taiwan), regards Taiwan as an integral part of historic China, just as it views Hong Kong’s return to the fold from British colonialism as fair historical redress. In fact, the diplomatic reality is that tiny but economically over-achieving Taiwan is formally recognized as an independent government by only 30 countries, one of which is Panama, and not by either the United Nations or the U.S. But its feisty government and newfound democratic ways combine to create the effect of an independent state, which stations an army of loyalists and lobbyists in America. They spread enough good cheer and campaign dollars around to keep it always on the radar screen of another world power: the U.S. Congress.

In Washington, the worry was that Beijing would be royally agitated all over again if Taiwan pushed the diplomatic envelope anew. On this issue, Gareth C.C. Chang, senior vice president of Hughes Electronics and a prominent Chinese American with high-level contacts in both Beijing and Taipei, sympathized with Beijing: “The fundamental issue is, when the United States says there is only one China, as it did in the Shanghai Communique, what do we mean? One China? Or two? Is Lee coming in as a citizen or as president of the Republic of China?” Then, later in the week, as Beijing’s protests started to seem routine and Washington’s nerves started easing, Indian-born Bhaskar Menon, chairman of the Beverly Hills-based International Media Investments, Inc. who personally knows many of the top political players in Asia, observed: “Had the Chinese not acquiesced by merely seeking assurances that President Lee would not be permitted to engage in political propaganda during his stopovers in Honolulu, on balance the transit visa should not have been granted. It would have seemed quite reckless to test Beijing’s response again to an issue on which its sensitivity has already been tested.”

Whatever happens in Hawaii, China, facing its all-important Communist Party congress in October and an impending U.S. state visit by President Jiang Zemin after that, doesn’t want anything to derail Sino-U.S. relations. It apparently has decided to live with the assurances it’s getting from Washington. In fact, a U.S. administration official told me that transit permission is expected to be granted solely for Lee’s “safety, comfort and convenience,” not for any political or diplomatic purpose. This is quite different in tone and substance from his 1995 visa, which overturned a de facto 16-year ban on top-level Taiwanese visitors and allowed Lee four days of fun-filled public appearances and press conferences.

Taiwan thus is on notice that while the United States will treat its top elected official with all due “protocol and respect,” as it was put to me, future visas will be more difficult to come by if Lee launches any verbal rockets from Hawaii. That could happen yet; Taiwan does not always pull its punches. In a recent Los Angeles speech, its foreign minister spoke about China’s “malicious distortions” and the “stark contrast” between the two systems--a vocabulary choice scarcely reverential to U.S. efforts to work both sides of the Taiwan strait.

By contrast, the potential significance of Beijing’s emotional self-containment policy, if that is what we have here, should not go unnoticed. Taiwan is the one issue that absolutely can drive Beijing up the wall and its troops over the top. The question now is whether the Taiwan delegation will deliver a responsible low-profile presence during the stopover, which could last a day or two in each direction. Purists could argue that America is a free country that under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act has a measure of obligation to the doughty island; thus Lee should be allowed to say or do anything he wants. Sorry, not this time: If the U.S. permits Lee’s visiting entourage to grandstand while in Hawaii, Taiwan will have been given the leverage, once again, to imperil Sino-U.S. relations--and perhaps sabotage the summit.