When Taiwan's then president Lee Teng-hui visited his alma mater in the US in 1995, China was so upset that it sent several rounds of live-fire missiles to spots just off the island's main ports a few months later.

As Ma Ying-jeou, the opposition Kuomintang's presidential hopeful for 2008, starts a tour of the US this week, including making a speech at Harvard, his alma mater, that crisis in the Taiwan Strait a decade ago will be on the minds of many. For some observers believe that if Mr Ma succeeds Chen Shui-bian, the incumbent whose insistence on reasserting Taiwan's de facto independence is once again angering China, tensions in cross-Strait relations could finally recede.