BEIJING — On Saturday, voters in Taiwan will go to the polls to elect a new president. Interest in Communist-ruled China, which claims the island as its own territory, is great, yet one word is almost entirely missing from the voluminous debate over the event: “president.”

Instead, reports in the state-run news media and even in somewhat freer online discussion forums are riddled with euphemisms: “The big election.” “The leader’s election.” “The Taiwan-area election.”

Where the phrase “presidential election” does appear, it is invariably encased in quotation marks, as if it were not quite legitimate.

China and Taiwan have been estranged since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists retreated to the island after their defeat in the Chinese civil war in 1949 to Mao Zedong’s Communists. Beijing continues to regard Taiwan as a province awaiting reunification with the mainland and has threatened force should the island move toward formal independence.