[IP] Chinese General Threatens Nuclear Retaliation if US Helps Taiwan
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Chinese General Threatens Use of A-Bombs if US Intrudes
By Joseph Kahn
The New York Times
Friday 15 July 2005
Beijing - China should use nuclear weapons against the United
States if the American military intervenes in any conflict over
Taiwan, a senior Chinese military official said 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," the official, Maj. Gen.
Zhu Chenghu, said at an official briefing.
General Zhu, considered a hawk, stressed that 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 extensive comments to a visiting delegation of
correspondents based in Hong Kong, General Zhu said he believed that
the Chinese government was under internal pressure to change its "no
first use" policy and to make clear that it would employ the most
powerful weapons at its disposal to defend its claim over Taiwan.
"War logic" dictates that a weaker power needs 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
United States.
The Pentagon is preparing the release of a long-delayed report
on the Chinese military that some experts say will warn that China
could emerge as a strategic rival to the United States. 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, the American energy concern.
China has had atomic bombs since 1964 and currently has a small
arsenal of land- and sea-based nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach
the United States, according to most Western intelligence estimates.
Some Pentagon officials have argued that China has been expanding the
size and sophistication of its nuclear bombs and delivery systems,
while others argue that Beijing has done little more than maintain a
minimal but credible 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 Bush has made clear that the United States would defend
Taiwan.
Many military analysts have assumed that any battle over Taiwan
would be localized, with both China and the United States taking care
to ensure that it would not expand into a general war between the two
powers.
But the comments by General Zhu suggest that at least some
elements of the military are prepared to widen the conflict, perhaps
to persuade the United States that 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 W. Freeman, a former Pentagon official, that China would
consider using nuclear weapons in a Taiwan conflict. Mr. Freeman
quoted Mr. Xiong as saying that Americans should worry more about Los
Angeles than Taipei.
Foreign Ministry officials did not immediately respond to
requests for comment about General Zhu's remarks.
General Zhu said he had recently expressed his views to former
American officials, including Mr. Freeman and Adm. Dennis C. Blair,
the former commander in chief of the United States Pacific Command.
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