Cornell University, standing like a fortress atop a verdant hilltop in upstate New York, is isolated and serene, far from war and the worries of the world.

So why is it that last week's visit to Cornell by an alumnus, former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-Hui, had tempers flaring half a world away? Six years ago, Lee's visit to the campus provoked a long season of cross-strait tensions, culminating in a chilling demonstration of brute force in March 1996 when China fired three missiles as warning shots across the "bow" of Taiwan. Amid talk of war, a U.S. carrier group in the Pacific moved toward the Chinese coast to express Washington's displeasure and Lee, Taiwan's paramount leader, went on to win the March 1996 election easily, becoming the first popularly elected leader in Chinese history.

Naturally Beijing was not pleased, but there was some consolation in the fact that Lee's Nationalist Party, or KMT, the erstwhile ally and enemy that Beijing loves to hate, shared a one-China vision and a Leninist party structure not too different from the Chinese Communist Party. The only worse humiliation that democracy on the other side of the strait could deal to the Communist commissars aiming to reunite would be for the people of Taiwan to elect a non-KMT candidate in favor of independence, which is precisely what happened four years later. Here again Lee made history, voluntarily relinquishing power with wit and grace to let younger men contend for election