If you’ll just help us out with North Korea, we’ll do our best to “restrain” Taiwan:

President Hu Jintao of China reacted sharply on Tuesday to the decision by President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan to terminate the island’s unification council, calling it “a grave provocation” and “a dangerous step on the road toward Taiwan independence.”

Mr. Chen on Tuesday completed the formalities for scrapping the National Unification Council and guidelines for unification with mainland China. Though largely moribund, the council and the guidelines were symbols of Taiwan’s political links to Beijing that Mr. Chen had once vowed to preserve.

[snip]

Even so, the scrapping of the unification council, which Mr. Chen first signaled in late January, was widely viewed in Beijing as a test of how successfully the United States could constrain Mr. Chen.

After a concerted diplomatic push by the Bush administration, Mr. Chen modified the wording of his order, saying the council would “cease to function” rather than be abolished, the term he had used in January. He also reiterated his pledge to maintain the status quo in cross-strait relations.

The pledge and the wording change appeared to reassure Washington. The State Department issued a statement on Monday noting Mr. Chen’s decision not to abolish the council formally, suggesting that Washington considered that a significant concession.

But in Beijing’s view, Mr. Chen effectively prevailed over Washington’s objections.

“Although he did not use the term ‘abolish’ and changed the term to ‘cease function,’ this is merely a word game,” China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said. “Basically he is tricking the Taiwan people and international opinion.”

Yan Xuetong, an international relations expert at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said Mr. Chen had shown that he could manage American pressure. Though Mr. Chen violated his onetime pledge to the United States to leave the unification council in place, he ended up winning tacit American support for his effort to terminate it, Mr. Yan said.

Mr. Huang of People’s University gave the United States credit for forcing at least a nominal concession from Mr. Chen, but said China would probably look for President Bush to make a fresh commitment to oppose Taiwanese independence, perhaps during the planned visit of President Hu to Washington in April.

In all seriousness, I think the U.S. has done far more to “restrain” Taiwan (i.e. hamper self-determination of Taiwanese to remain a free country) than China has ever done to curb North Korea’s nuclear program, but as Gordon Chang said, we tend to reward China’s lack of cooperation.