China and the US fought a verbal skirmish last week over the possible use of nuclear weapons against each other, underscoring the often precarious relations between Beijing and Washington.
China fired the first salvo, a belligerent statement by Major General Zhu Chenghu (朱成虎) to foreign correspondents. Zhu said China would aim nuclear weapons at American cities if US forces intervened in a Chinese assault to prevent Taiwan from turning its de facto separation from China into formal independence.
The US response was subtle but unmistakable at the very end of a Pentagon report on China's military power. It warned that China should avoid a conflict over Taiwan involving the US as that "would give rise to a long-term hostile relationship between the two nations -- a result that would not be in China's interests."
In the briefing arranged by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Zhu said: "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."
"Position-guided ammunition" looks like a bad translation. The general probably meant "precision-guided munitions," sometimes called "smart bombs."
"If the Americans are determined to interfere, then we will be determined to respond," Zhu said. "We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian."
"Of course," he asserted, "the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."
The general said this was his personal view. The foreign ministry reinforced that just after he spoke, suggesting a scripted ploy. No serving officer in China makes policy statements without clearance from the top.
That led to speculation about what the Chinese were up to. Zhu, aware that the Pentagon was about to issue a report critical of China's military buildup, may have mounted a preemptive strike. As he acknowledged, China lacks the forces to take on the US with conventional weapons and thus might resort to nuclear arms.
Clearly, however, this was not a new threat. Ten years ago, Lieutenant General Xiong Guangkai (熊光楷), then a senior officer on the general staff, issued a similar warning. In the meantime, many Chinese have said the US would not put a US city at nuclear risk in a conflict over Taiwan and would not fight to defend the island.
A former commander of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Dennis Blair, told the Washington Post: "They think it's good to have a mad dog in your closet who might scare your potential adversaries."
Blair and other senior US officers have personally but privately cautioned Chinese leaders in recent years not to miscalculate US capabilities and intentions.
Whatever Zhu's motives, the US government took his threat seriously. A State Department spokesman called his remarks "highly irresponsible."
The Pentagon's report on Chinese military power was in preparation long before Zhu issued the nuclear warning. Nonetheless, it noted that China has deployed or is in final development of ballistic missiles that could hit anywhere in the US and addressed the issues raised by the general, in the context of China's threat to Taiwan.
The report said that China "does not yet possess the military capability to accomplish with confidence its political objectives on the island, particularly when confronted with outside intervention," meaning the US.
Further, a war "could severely retard economic development," the report said, adding that international sanctions against Beijing, either by individual states or by groups of states, could severely damage Beijing's economic development.
"China has claimed spectacular economic growth rates of 7 to 10 percent in recent years," it said.
Politically, a war over Taiwan could "lead to instability on the mainland," it said.
The report noted that a record 58,000 domestic protests, many of them violent, erupted in China last year. A failure in an attack on Taiwan, the report said, "would almost certainly result in severe repercussions" for leaders who had advocated military action.
The Pentagon's final caution: "Beijing must calculate the probability of US intervention in any conflict in the Taiwan Strait."
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS