What's in a name? And what does a flag symbolize?

The answer to the first question is pretty much everything, at least to China's prickly Communist rulers and their local minions, particularly when the question concerns Taiwan, and when the name -- even one as innocuous as "Taipei National University of the Arts" -- could be read to construe that Taiwan is a separate nation.

For a flag, too, it seems, the answer is everything -- history, culture, tradition. New Zealanders just voted by 56.6% to keep their old flag, even with its Union Jack and British colonial overtones. The emotional attachment to the old overcame all the arguments, and proposed designs, for the new.

When it comes to Taiwan, China's leaders view the flag not as a source of local pride or culture, but as a fraught symbol of separatist aspirations. That includes whether it is being innocently waved by a teenage pop singer, or when it is draped over the buff shoulders of American megastar Madonna.

The latest cross-strait kerfuffle involves a name. It erupted in late March, when the Hong Kong government ordered a drama group called The Nonsensemakers to change the program for a play listing its executive producer, Lo Shuk-yin, as a graduate of the Taipei National University of the Arts. The objection was to the word "national."

Beijing, which keeps more than 1,000 short-range ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan, considers the island a renegade province and an integral part of the Chinese motherland, and has threatened to invade if Taiwan's leaders ever declare independence.

A search by Hong Kong media found around two dozen cases since 1999 when the word "national" had been mysteriously excised from official Hong Kong press releases involving the names of Taiwanese universities. The practice had been standard, but largely unnoticed, for years. Critics say it compromises artistic freedom and Beijing's promise to allow Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy.

But the furor over The Nonsensemakers pales beside this year's earlier flag flaps.

Forced contrition

First, there was widespread outrage in China when a 16-year-old K-pop singer named Chou Tzu-yu, who performs in multinational teen band Twice, was seen on a South Korean variety show waving a flag from her native Taiwan. After a nationalistic uproar on Chinese websites, a chastened Chou was forced to issue a videotaped apology.

"There is only one China," she said, echoing Beijing's preferred formulation and starkly mimicking the televised "confessions" that have become common lately in China. "The two sides of the strait are one, and I have always felt proud to be Chinese."

China's giddy nationalists soon turned their ire on a bigger target, Madonna, who had the temerity to display the offending Taiwanese national flag in early February during an encore performance on the Taipei leg of her "Rebel Heart Tour" in Asia, despite her attempt at neutrality by shouting: "I love China. I love Taiwan." Taiwanese were thrilled by the appearance of the flag; mainlanders and their supporters in Hong Kong, less so.

The flag fracases and the name brouhaha might seem trivial. But under President Xi Jinping, China has grown increasingly authoritarian and more militarily assertive abroad.

The election in January of Tsai Ing-wen, of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, as the island's first female president means that a confrontation across the Taiwan Strait seems more likely now than at any time since China fired missiles toward the island in 1995 and 1996.

Tsai's landslide election victory seemed a direct rebuke to outgoing President Ma Ying-jeou, who pushed for closer ties with the mainland, and even met with Xi last year in Singapore, in the first-ever meeting between Chinese and Taiwanese leaders since China's civil war.

In 2010, I wrote an article for The Washington Post describing how China and Taiwan were becoming inextricably intertwined, economically, culturally and through family ties. Time, I thought, would be the great unifier.

But since then, China has been losing the war for Taiwanese hearts and minds. Recent polls show a historically high number of Taiwanese, more than 60%, now consider themselves "Taiwanese" as opposed to "Chinese." The number supporting unification with China has dropped to under 10%.

Beijing's leaders say unification is their ultimate goal. But to get there, they may want to start by reassessing their own heavy-handed approach, such as coming down hard on theater groups and teenage pop singers. If unification is their goal, then dropping the bully-boy tactics over titles and flags may be a good place to start.

Keith B. Richburg is an author and former foreign editor of The Washington Post.