Top Chinese general warns US over attack By Alexandra Harney in Beijing and
Demetri Sevastopulo and Edward Alden in Washington
Published: July 14 2005 20:59 | Last updated: July 14 2005 23:03
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.
Gen Zhu was speaking at a function for foreign journalists organised, in
part, by the Chinese government. He added that China's definition of its
territory included warships and aircraft.
If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to
respond, said Gen Zhu, who is also a professor at China's National Defence
University.
We . . . 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.
Gen Zhu is a self-acknowledged hawk who has warned that China could strike
the US with long-range missiles. But his threat to use nuclear weapons in a
conflict over Taiwan is the most specific by a senior Chinese official in
nearly a decade.
However, some US-based China experts cautioned that Gen Zhu probably did not
represent the mainstream People's Liberation Army view.
He is running way beyond his brief on what China might do in relation to the
US if push comes to shove, said one expert with knowledge of Gen Zhu. Nobody
who is cleared for information on Chinese war scenarios is going to talk like
this, he added.
Gen Zhu's comments come as the Pentagon prepares to brief Congress next
Monday on its annual report on the Chinese military, which is expected to take
a harder line than previous years. They are also likely to fuel the mounting
anti-China sentiment on Capitol Hill.
In recent months, a string of US officials, including Donald Rumsfeld,
defence secretary, have raised concerns about China's military rise. The
Pentagon on Thursday declined to comment on hypothetical scenarios.
Rick Fisher, a former senior US congressional official and an authority on
the Chinese military, said the specific nature of the threat is a new addition
to China's public discourse. China's official doctrine has called for no first
use of nuclear weapons since its first atomic test in 1964. But Gen Zhu is not
the first Chinese official to refer to the possibility of using such weapons
first in a conflict over Taiwan.
Chas Freeman, a former US assistant secretary of defence, said in 1996 that a
PLA official had told him China could respond in kind to a nuclear strike by
the US in the event of a conflict with Taiwan. The official is believed to have
been Xiong Guangkai, now the PLA's deputy chief of general staff.
Gen Zhu said his views did not represent official Chinese policy and he did
not anticipate war with the US.
Additional reporting by Richard McGregor in Beijing
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
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