Taipei, Taiwan ? Taiwan tried to soothe tensions with China by scrapping military exercises Wednesday as the communist giant’s state-run media threatened to use war to win peace.

The current flare-up between the rivals has been the worst since Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian was elected two years ago, promising to help heal a five-decade split with China.

Two Taiwanese sailors stand guard on a pier as a Dutch-made Dragon-class submarine is seen in the background in this June 23, 2001 file photo from Tsoying Naval Base in Taiwan. Amid rising tensions with China, Taiwan's military canceled a submarine-hunting exercise scheduled for next week, a military spokesman said Wednesday.

China was angered by Chen’s comments last week that Taiwan and China are separate countries a bold challenge to Beijing’s sacred view that the self-ruled island belongs to the mainland.

Chen also said he favored creating a law that would allow Taiwanese to vote on the island’s future.

As tensions simmered, Taiwan on Wednesday canceled a planned Aug. 15 display of the military’s ability to hunt down and fend off attacking Chinese submarines. The war games scheduled before the current dispute and open to the media were routine and were to be staged in the Pacific off Taiwan’s eastern coast, the military said.

“The Ministry of Defense considered the current situation in the Taiwan Strait,” military spokesman Huang Suey-sheng said. “To avoid speculation and misunderstanding, we decided to cancel this activity.”

But in Beijing, state-run newspapers were full of articles that ratcheted up the tough talk. An article published by two key mouthpieces of the communist leadership People’s Daily and the China Daily addressed a growing possibility that “peace will have to be safeguarded and won through the use of force.”

In an edition of People’s Daily for overseas readers, an opinion piece warned that the Taiwanese president “is playing with fire.”

“The mainland is confident and capable of realizing the absolute total reunification of the motherland with any necessary means and at all costs,” the article added.

In the streets of Beijing, several residents said they supported the government position that Taiwan must unify with China.

“I hope it will be solved with peace, not war,” said Shi Chang, waiting at a bus stop. “I think Chen’s independent streak is annoying. Taiwan is part of China.”

The Taiwanese president has yet to explain why he decided to make the unusually provocative comment that there was “one country on each side” of the Taiwan Strait the 100-mile-wide body of water that divides the rivals.

On Tuesday he tempered his remarks, saying that both sides were equal sovereigns. But Chen avoided the issue Wednesday as he toured an aquarium in the south and watched a troupe of dancers from one of the island’s indigenous tribes.

In 1895, China’s last dynasty, the Qing, handed the small leaf-shaped island over to Japan as part of a war settlement. The Japanese ruled Taiwan for five decades until the end of World War II. Many Taiwanese still feel a stronger affinity with Japan than China.

When the Communists toppled the Nationalist Party and took over the mainland in 1949, the Nationalists fled to Taiwan and made the island a base for anti-communist resistance.

A majority of Taiwanese opposes unifying with China as long as the Communists are in power. But polls indicate that most Taiwanese don’t support moves that could spark a war with China.