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On the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation conference here this week, another episode in the 90-year-old running feud between the Nationalist and Communist Chinese will be played out.

For the last three years, the Nationalist government led by President Ma Ying-jeou in Taipei has been aggressively pursuing a new policy toward the Communist regime in Beijing. It seeks a peaceable engagement without surrendering to Beijing’s demands that Taipei give up its self-governing status.

In Taipei last week, officials in the Mainland Affairs Council, which executes President Ma’s policy, asserted that the effort has taken hold. They pointed, for instance, to the 558 regularly scheduled airline flights between Taiwan and mainland China each week and the flood of tourists traveling each way. Five years ago, such flights didn’t exist.

Nonetheless, what is known in Taiwan as cross-strait relations, reflecting the Taiwan Strait that separates the island from the mainland, will be put on trial once again in a meeting between the two delegations to the APEC gathering.

A key issue will be whether the delegation from China treats the delegation from Taiwan with diplomatic courtesy or, as has occurred in international gatherings in the past, the delegates from Beijing treat their counterparts from Taipei with disdain and open contempt.

The stature of the leaders of the Communist and the Nationalist delegations and their respective roles at APEC provide a stark comparison of the power positions of the two rivals.

Beijing will be represented by Hu Jintao, President of the People’s Republic of China, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, who is scheduled to arrive Thursday and to deliver a keynote address.

Taipei will be represented by Lien Chan, a private citizen, former Vice President of Taiwan, and former chairman of the Nationalist Party, perhaps better known as the Kuomintang, who will be a panelist in one of the many separate sessions.

From the beginning of APEC in 1989, Beijing officials have sought to humiliate the representatives from Taipei. At Chinese insistence, APEC has forbidden the delegates from Taiwan from using the proper title of their government, the Republic of China (ROC), or simply Taiwan.

Instead, the delegation from Taiwan has been forced to use the awkward term “Chinese Taipei,” the same as that used in international athletic events.

Other members of APEC send their heads of government to the conference. At Chinese insistence, only lower ranking representatives from Taiwan may attend. Lien Chan, because of his earlier positions, is considered the most senior representative to attend an annual APEC conference — but he will be excluded from the leaders meetings.

After President Ma took office in May 2008, he set out on a new path for Taiwan in seeking to emphasize economic and cultural ties with mainland China. At the same time, he has emphasized Taiwan’s desire to remain separate from China.

“The Republic of China is a sovereign and independent nation,” he said in a recent address, “and Taiwan is our home.”

Officials at the Mainland Affairs Council pointed out that Taiwan has signed 15 agreements with Beijing over the last three years to open up transport, communications, trade, investment and tourism with the mainland.

The minister in charge of the council that executes the president’s cross-strait policy, Lai Shin-yuan, has noted in public addresses that “Mainland China has not yet renounced its threat to use force against Taiwan.”

Until that happens, she has said, Taiwan’s engagement with the mainland will be limited.

This rivalry has been running since the founding of the Communist Party of China in 1921. They fought in the 1920s and 1930s, then joined in an uneasy alliance against Japan during World War II. After that, a civil war ended in 1949 with the Communists in control of the mainland and the Nationalists taking refuge in Taiwan.

The Nationalists lost China’s seat in the United Nations to the Communists in 1971 and the US switched its diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. Since then, cross-strait relations have gone from tension to calm and back until President Ma started building a symbolic bridge to the mainland three years ago.

Thus both Mr. Hu and Mr. Lien will be carrying full loads of historical baggage when they meet here in Honolulu.

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