A Chinese general denounced a US suggestion that Taiwan's military target China's Three Gorges dam and said yesterday that any strike on the world's biggest hydropower project would lead to war.
In its annual report to Congress on China's military power, the Pentagon suggested last month that Taiwan target the dam as a deterrent against any Chinese invasion of the island.
China will "be seriously on guard against threats from `Taiwan independence terrorists,'" People's Liberation Army (PLA) Lieutenant General Liu Yuan (
"[It] will not be able to stop war ... it will have the exact opposite of the desired effect," Liu said.
"It will provoke retaliation that will `blot out the sky and cover up the earth,'" he said, quoting a Chinese idiom.
The warning came as Ministry of National Defense in Taipei said it had test fired two Patriot anti-missile missiles to showcase its air defense capability.
The test was part of a routine drill and was conducted at a military base in southern Taiwan, the ministry said. It did not say when the test was held or give any other details.
Liu asserted that no country had conventional warhead missiles capable of critically damaging the dam -- made of concrete with a maximum thickness of more than 100m.
"The Three Gorges Dam will not collapse and cannot be destroyed," he said.
Seismologists have said the dam is designed to withstand an earthquake measuring 10 on the Richter scale.
The dam was first proposed decades ago, but construction was delayed because late Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong (
But the Pentagon report stirred controversy in China.
"Since Taipei cannot match Beijing's ability to field offensive systems, proponents of strikes against the mainland apparently hope that merely presenting credible threats to China's urban population or high-value targets, such as the Three Gorges Dam, will deter Chinese military coercion," it said.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said last week the report was "Cold War mentality harboring evil intentions."
US President George W. Bush has pledged to do whatever it takes to help Taiwan defend itself against an invasion by China.
Liu, the general, called the Pentagon's suggestion "petty psychological war."
He likened Washington to "a prostitute pretending to be a gentleman" and no better than Osama bin Laden.
The Three Gorges Dam, also the world's largest flood control project, is due to be completed in 2009 at a cost of nearly US$25 billion. With total capacity of 18,200 megawatts, it will generate 84.6 billion kwh of electricity a year.
China says it needs the dam to contain the Yangtze River's devastating annual floods and to meet future power demand. But critics say it is not a practical solution to either problem and could cause pollution by slowing the river's flow.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
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