The results of the Taiwanese presidential elections indicate that voters favor closer relations with the mainland, in spite of China's recent actions in Tibet.

There were two main contestants in Taiwan's elections held Saturday, the Nationalist (Kuomintang) Party of Ma Ying-jeou and the Democratic Progressive Party of Frank Hsieh. Roughly speaking, the Kuomintang, the old party of historic Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, favors improved Taiwanese relations with China, particularly in the economic realm. The DPP, which was the incumbent party, favors a more militant, nationalist Taiwanese approach to China, to the degree that it had sponsored a referendum to the effect that Taiwan should have another run at achieving United Nations membership as a separate country.

Mr. Ma and the Kuomintang won the elections with 58 percent of the vote, to 42 percent for the Democratic Progressives. Estimated turnout was high, at almost 76 percent.

There was some thought that the Taiwanese would take a look at the heavy-handed treatment Beijing is dishing out to Tibetans, who are not enchanted at all by the role the Chinese are playing in their formerly independent country and, on that basis, vote for the more independent Taiwanese approach to China that the DPP represented.

But they didn't. Instead they voted, in effect, for closer ties to China, based on the general perception that the road to greater economic prosperity for Taiwan lies in better relations with an increasingly dynamic mainland. China's estimated annual growth rate continues to exceed 10 percent. Financial and commercial relations between Taiwan and the mainland have continued to broaden and deepen in any case in recent years.

It is assumed that under Mr. Ma's leadership things will go even faster. One day, probably still in the somewhat distant future, lies the assumption that Taiwan will go the way of Macau and Hong Kong, more formally into Beijing's orbit.

For the United States, this democratically chosen road of Taiwanese-Chinese detente is a positive development. For one thing, it reduces the chance of Taiwan asking the United States to fight the Chinese on its behalf, something that America may not be willing or able to do. There is, after all, the war in Iraq. Besides, China might decide to sell the United States to some Dubai investors in revenge if Washington intervened in its evolving relationship with Taiwan.