JEFF CHIU/AP

Allen Leung sits at Six Companies meeting hall in San Francisco's Chinatown, May 19, 2004. A rift between pro-Taiwan and pro-China forces within the San Francisco's Chinese community is growing. Leung is a pro-Taiwan board member of the powerful Six Companies board who is resisting changing tradition to be more pro-China.

SAN FRANCISCO - Political passions have been running high in San Francisco's Chinese community since the president of Chinatown's most powerful group was a no-show at his own inauguration.

Daniel Hom ditched the March ceremony featuring Taiwan's anthem and flag and took part instead in a pro-China inaugural several blocks away.

Angry words were spoken, lawsuits were filed, and no one knows what will happen Friday, when another pro-China board member assumes the rotating two-month presidency of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association.

The dispute reflects an issue that has roiled American foreign policy for more than a half-century: Communist China vs. Taiwan.

Hom, a 66-year-old retired engineer, said it is time for a change.

"People here see that things are changing in China and realize it's more appropriate to give recognition to the People's Republic," he said.

Similar rifts are evident among Chinese Americans around the United States over support for Taiwan, a traditional U.S. ally that Beijing's communist government views as a renegade province. In New York's Chinatown, for example, allegiances are shifting as new immigrants from China arrive.

At the 150-year-old San Francisco group - which is also known as the Chinese Six Cos. and has acted for generations as a quasi-government for Chinese immigrants, settling disputes and providing jobs - almost every board member opposes Taiwanese independence and wants to see China reunified.

"They don't identify with Taiwanese nationalism," said Him Mark Lai, an adjunct professor at San Francisco State University who studies Chinatown history. "Most Chinese came from mainland China. They didn't come from Taiwan."

But the group, like others around the United States, has ties to China's Nationalist Party that began a century ago and persisted through the Cold War, after the Nationalists were defeated by Communists and fled to Taiwan in 1949.

Many members of the Chinese Six Cos. fled communist China themselves, and they want to maintain Taiwan ties until China embraces democracy.

Still, the balance is tipping with China's growing economic and political clout.

"Today mainland China is a superpower that cannot be ignored," said David Lee, who directs the Chinese American Voter Education Committee in San Francisco.

The dispute boiled over when Hom rejected the traditional rites, which include singing Taiwan's national anthem, bowing to its flag and inviting a top Taiwan official to the pagoda-style meeting hall, with its portrait of Chinese nationalist Sun Yat-sen.

"We all waited here, but he didn't show up," recalled Allen Leung, a pro-Taiwan board member. "He screwed up everything."

Instead, Hom and his allies went to a restaurant, where they displayed the mainland's red flags and sang China's national song with the consul general of the People's Republic.

The break with tradition touched a nerve, with dozens of organizations buying newspaper ads supporting one side or the other.

Lok Kwan, the 65-year-old pro-China board member slated to become the next president, said that he hopes to avoid another conflict but that he will not participate in the pro-Taiwan rituals either.

If no compromise is reached, he said, "we might have to do something drastic to embarrass them."

Other board members said it is time for the Six Companies to bow out of international politics and refocus on service at a time when many Chinese have left Chinatowns and integrated into mainstream society.

"It's a no-win situation when you take sides," said board member Melvin Lee, 65.