Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian is due to meet his security advisers to discuss whether to shut down a council on eventual unification with China.
If Taiwan decided to scrap the National Unification Council and its guidelines, it would infuriate China, analysts say.
China warned Mr Chen that such action would "certainly trigger a serious crisis across the Taiwan Straits".
The Chinese authorities have long accused Mr Chen of pushing for Taiwanese independence.
China sees Taiwan as its territory and has threatened to use force if the island declares independence.
The US, Taiwan's closest ally in the face of this threat, has made clear that it supports the status quo.
'Absurd'
Mr Chen's wish to scrap the council and its guidelines has long been known.
Last week he reaffirmed this view when he told visiting US Congressman Robert Simmons that the National Unification Council and its National Unification Guidelines were "absurd products of an absurd era".
"It deprives the Taiwan people's rights to freely decide on cross-strait relations and the future direction of our country," he said.
But Beijing has expressed strong opposition.
"The escalated secessionist push of Chen Shui-bian will certainly trigger a serious crisis across the Taiwan Straits and destroy peace and stability in the Asia Pacific region," the mainland's Taiwan Affairs Office said in an online statement late on Sunday.
"Chen Shui-bian is a troublemaker for Taiwan, for cross-strait relations and for the Asia Pacific region," it added.
The National Unification Council was set up in 1990 as an attempt to convince the Chinese authorities that Taiwan was committed to reunification, and it helped kick-start landmark talks between the two sides in the early 1990s.
Despite always opposing the council, Mr Chen promised when he first took office in 2000 that he would not scrap it or its guidelines.
(BBC)
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