Nuclear threat against US over Taiwan
By Joseph Kahn
Beijing
July 16, 2005
China should use nuclear weapons against the United States if the American military intervenes in any conflict over Taiwan, according to a senior Chinese military official.
"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," Major-General Zhu Chenghu, said at an official briefing.
General Zhu, considered a hawk, stressed his comments reflected his personal views and not official policy. Beijing has long insisted that it will not initiate the use of nuclear weapons in any conflict.
But in comments to a visiting delegation of correspondents based in Hong Kong, General Zhu said he believed the Chinese Government was under internal pressure to change its "no first use" policy and to make it clear that it would employ the most powerful weapons at its disposal to defend its claim over Taiwan.
"War logic" dictated that a weaker power needed to use maximum efforts to defeat a stronger rival, he said, speaking in fluent English. "We have no capability to fight a conventional war against the United States," General Zhu said. "We can't win this kind of war."
Whether or not the comments signal a shift in Chinese policy, they come at a sensitive time in relations between China and the US.
The Pentagon is preparing to release a long-delayed report on the Chinese military that some experts say will warn that China could emerge as a strategic rival to the US. National security concerns have also been a major issue in the $18.5 billion bid by CNOOC Ltd, a major Chinese oil and gas company, to purchase the Unocal Corporation, an American energy concern.
China has had nuclear bombs since 1964 and has a small arsenal of land and sea-based nuclear-tipped missiles that could reach the US, according to most Western intelligence estimates. Some Pentagon officials have argued that China has been expanding the size and sophistication of its nuclear weapons and delivery systems, while others argue Beijing has done little more than maintain a minimal deterrent against a nuclear attack.
Beijing has said repeatedly that it would use military force to prevent Taiwan from becoming a formally independent country. President George Bush has made it clear that the US would defend Taiwan.
Many military analysts have assumed that any battle over Taiwan would be localised, with both China and the US taking care to ensure that it did not expand into a general war between the two powers.
But the comments by General Zhu suggest at least some elements of the military are prepared to widen the conflict, perhaps to persuade the US it could no more successfully fight a limited war against China than it could against the former Soviet Union.
"If the Americans are determined to interfere, then we will be determined to respond," he said. "We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."
General Zhu's threat is not the first of its kind from a senior Chinese military official. In 1995, Xiong Guangkai, who is now the deputy chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, told Chas Freeman, a former Pentagon official, that China would consider using nuclear weapons in a Taiwan conflict. Mr Freeman quoted him as saying that Americans should worry more about Los Angeles than Taipei.
Foreign Ministry officials did not immediately respond to General Zhu's remarks.
But the general said he had recently expressed his views to former American officials, including Mr Freeman and Admiral Dennis Blair, the former commander in chief of the US Pacific Command.
- New York Times
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world...-us-over-taiwan/2005/07/15/1121422838199.html
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Top Chinese general warns US over attack
By Alexandra Harney in Beijing and Demetri Sevastopulo and Edward Alden in Washington
Published: July 14 2005 21:59 | Last updated: July 15 2005 00:03
China is prepared to use nuclear weapons against the US if it is attacked by Washington during a confrontation over Taiwan, a Chinese general said on Thursday.
“If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,” said General Zhu Chenghu.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/28cfe55a-f4a7-11d9-9dd1-00000e2511c8.html
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Report: China sends nuke warning to U.S. over Taiwan
Thursday, July 14, 2005; Posted: 11:13 p.m. EDT (03:13 GMT)
BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- A senior Chinese general has warned that China was ready to use nuclear weapons against the United States if Washington attacked his country over Taiwan, the Financial Times newspaper reported on Friday.
Zhu Chenghu, a major general in the People's Liberation Army who said he was expressing his own views and did not anticipate a conflict with Washington, nevertheless said China would have no option but to go nuclear in the event of an attack.
"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition onto the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," he told an official briefing for international journalists.
A spokeswoman for China's Foreign Ministry noted that the general had said in the article he was not speaking on behalf of the government. A spokesman later said the ministry was looking into the matter.
The Defense Ministry declined to comment, saying the Foreign Ministry had organized the event at which the general spoke.
Beijing considers Taiwan part of China, and has vowed to bring the self-governed democracy back into the fold. In March, China's parliament passed an anti-secession law authorizing the use of "non-peaceful means" to do so.
Zhu said the threat to escalate a conflict might be the only way to stop one because China did not have the capability to fight a conventional war with the United States.
"If the Americans are determined to interfere ... we will be determined to respond," he said.
"We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese," he added.
China first tested a nuclear bomb in 1964. It has declared a policy of not using such weapons unless it has already suffered nuclear attack.
The newspaper observed that it was unclear what prompted the remarks, but noted that they were the most specific by a senior Chinese official in nearly a decade.
During a visit to Beijing earlier this month U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said there should be no unilateral change in the status quo over the disputed island of Taiwan.
"That means that we don't support unilateral moves toward independence by Taiwan. It also means that we are concerned about the military balance, and we'll say to China that they should do nothing militarily to provoke Taiwan," she added.
Copyright 2005 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/07/14/china.taiwan.nuclear.reut/
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So, you want to know where I got that little bit of Info. Red China's own Gerenal Zhu said that himself. So I think that the People's Republic of China is now on my list of nations sthat I don't trust. That And I think it is a illegal government due to the fact that Taiwan is still the legal government of the Republic of China in my opinion. Taiwan is it's own country, not a break away part of that RED China.
