The Chinese Communist Party is undermining its own legitimacy - as questionable as that may be - by taking the puffed-chest approach to Taiwan.

The current "one-China" approach is clearly without an anchor in reality.

The attempt to paint Taiwan as an extension of China is based on spurious and, it must be said, politically efficacious history.

According to historians, there is no record of Chinese presence in Taiwan prior to 1947. Before then, the island was likely inhabited by indigenous peoples, and was often largely self- governing, even under Chinese colonizers.

US-based historian Sande Cohen, writing recently for the Taipei Times, notes the precursors to today's Taiwanese were constantly organizing uprisings: "It must be embarrassing for the CCP to know that Taiwan represents the original Asian resistance to domination," he writes.

So, why the aggressive approach to Taiwan and the manufactured history used to justify it?

There are a number of ways to approach this question, but the obvious answer is - surprise - politics.

This is partly to do with history. The political wing of the CCP has always been keen to maintain close ties with the People's Liberation Army. Ensuring it has enemies to justify its existence and its ever-increasing funding is therefore vital. Also, there is the nationalist tool, which supposedly shores up political legitimacy by giving the masses a sense of empire and national pride.

Few of the reasons for Beijing's approach to Taiwan are therefore what might be considered rational.

It sounds a little familiar too, does it not? Beijing's approach is not unlike that taken by the United States to current and previous offshore military and/or covert operations, which have tended to result in problems at the time or later.

US relations in the Middle East, most latterly with Saddam Hussein, for instance, its role in Southeast Asia in the 1950s, Latin America and today's Iraq disaster are a few of the headlines in a sorry story of error upon mistake upon disaster.

The disconcerting evidence of these corollaries is that the mainland too, inevitably, will lose the long war with Taiwan. As with the United States, this does not necessarily refer to any military campaign.

Consider the money being spent on the PLA.While official estimates of military spending in China are notoriously rubbery, it is estimated by China- watchers that spending has probably doubled since 2003. The US Defense Intelligence Agency says that spending on the PLA this year is about US$125 billion (HK$975 billion).

That is still far less than the US annual military budget of around US$400 billion, but that is not really the point. The issue is that money is being denied the rest of China. Why is it, for instance, that rural education and health care are in crisis? Why do some mainlanders still not have enough to eat?

As the mainland faces up to its harmonious society principles, and seeks to arrest the damage done by years of Maoist ideology and dull, party self- centeredness, the need to add fuel to the flames over Taiwan, and keep the military on the leash, will increasingly undermine the party's claim to political authority.

Uprisings over social inequality will not go away, neither will China get away with a repeat of 1989 and send in the tanks. The party's problems are only aided by its foolish refusal to release its white-knuckle grip on Taiwan. That is why Taipei wins and Beijing loses.

The mainland has backed itself into an unwinnable corner on Taiwan and it is time Beijing woke up to the fact that policy mistakes made decades ago need not poison its future.

Beijing needs to put away its jet fighters, cotton wool its rocket launchers, drop the nationalist, militarist line and get over Taiwan.

James Rose is editor of www.corporategovernance-asia.com