Partially buried in the news dominated by terrorist bombings and the Valerie Plame blamegame on July 15, was an overt threat against the United
States delivered by a general in Red China’s People’s Liberation Army
(PLA).
General Zhu Chengu, the dean of Red China’s National Defense
University, said that if the United States interfered with any Chinese
attempt to use force against Taiwan, China would attack America with
nuclear weapons. Here were his exact words:
“I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons. Of course, the
Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be
destroyed by the Chinese.”
America’s response to this threat has been curiously weak. America
chose its weakest department of government with which to respond:
State.
The State Department’s spokesman called the remarks “unfortunate,”
“disturbing” and “irresponsible.” The response made it seem as if the
State Department believed that the remarks were either made mistakenly
or did not represent the views of Red China’s leaders.
This was playing right into China’s hands. They proclaimed that the
general’s remarks were his own personal viewpoint and not official
Chinese policy. But, most importantly, the Chinese did not retract the
general’s statement, nor did they disavow the remarks or apologize.
One wonders what the outcry would be from both sides if a U.S. Army
general had uttered such a comment directed at China. I frankly believe
that our own State Department’s response would have been much stronger
and more critical had a U.S. officer made such a statement and there is
no doubt in my mind that we would have disowned the remark. Meanwhile,
our general’s career would be over for all practical purposes.
Some might say that perhaps the Chinese general’s career will suffer as
a result of his remarks. I doubt it. Not if history is any guide.
You see, this is the second time in the past decade that a high ranking
Chinese general has threatened the U.S. with nuclear weapons in the
past decade. Back in 1996, speaking about the same question of Taiwan,
General Xiong Guangkai inferred in a thinly veiled threat that the U.S.
would not come to Taiwan’s aid because America cared more about Los
Angeles than Taipei. He made this statement directly to U.S. diplomat
Charles Freeman.
No apology was ever issued for those remarks in 1996. General Xiong was
not reprimanded, in fact, he was promoted and became chief of military
intelligence, close to the top of the PLA hierarchy.
What is shocking and frustrating is that anyone in the United States
could even believe that a PLA general could ever just express his own
views in the first place. U.S. officers are highly restricted from
expressing their opinions on such matters. In China’s centralized,
communist society, there is no such thing as freedom of expression. Do
you think for a minute that this same general could have said that
Taiwan had a right to sovereignty and survived intact? Of course not.
General Zhu’s remarks were not inadvertent and they certainly did not
reflect his own personal views. We can be sure that his remarks were
calculated and designed to both issue a warning to the U.S. and then
solicit a response that could be carefully analyzed and measured.
So far, we have failed this analysis. Instead of wondering aloud
whether these remarks represented official Chinese policy, we should
have declared that the remarks put the U.S.-China relationship in a
whole new light then summoned our ambassador for consultations. We
should have demanded a retraction and apology. We should also have
convened a meeting of leaders from Japan, Australia and others in the
Asia-Pacific region to discuss China’s repeated threats to use nuclear
weapons. And we should have inferred that another option would be for
the U.S. to fully arm Taiwan with sophisticated weaponry so as to make
U.S. action unnecessary.
Christopher Holton has been writing about national security issues for more than a decade. He can be reached at prgraph3@bellsouth.net.
