Just when I thought I was gonna have a low-key Saturday morning, relax a little, blog about nice things and nonsense, I get to Laer’s blog, Cheat Seeking Missiles and get a slap-up-the-side-of-the-head with some cold-hard reality. He is responding to a quote by Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu in yesterday’s Asian Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times about China’s willigness to use nuclear weapons against the United States if we intervene in Taiwan’s behalf should China decide to take Taiwan by force. He then showcases a 1995 quote from Gen. Zhu, head of China’s National Defense University and follows that up with his own comments about the sale of Unocal to CNOOK and the future of US and China business relations.

“If the Americans are determined to interfere … we will be determined to respond,” said Gen. Zhu, head of China’s National Defense University. “We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian [in central China]. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds … of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”

Of course the man is crazy. Why would China risk losing everything east of Xian — billions of people in Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Wuhan, Guangzhou, most of its economy — over a small island? But just as “of course,” he is the leader of China’s military training system and he speaks for someone.

The Financial Times put it this way yesterday printing the quotes from General Zhu Chenghu:

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.
(…)
“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.” [emph. mine]

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. (…)

Not that I reference them often, but according to Greenpeace, in November of 1976 China conducted a successful atmospheric test of a 4,000 Kiloton Hydrogen weapon. If a weapon of that size were to be used on Los Angeles, the devastation would be 8 to 10 times more destructive than what I have described here. Having them is one thing, getting them on target is quite another. Also, looking around the Net for this information is confusing — due to China’s intense secrecy, their true nuclear capability appears not to be widely known — although I would hope our intellegence services have a much clearer picture. From a discussion of China’s strategic nuclear resources in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 2003:

Warhead estimates. The Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community have repeatedly stated that they expect China’s nuclear arsenal to increase significantly over the next decade or so. The CIA predicted in December 2001 that by 2015 “the total number of Chinese strategic warheads will rise several-fold” to 75–100 warheads deployed primarily against the United States. [17] The Pentagon recently predicted that the number of Chinese ICBMs capable of hitting the United States “could increase to around 30 by 2005 and may reach up to 60 by 2010.” [18]

Past predictions about China’s nuclear arsenal have proven highly inaccurate and exaggerated. For example, in the 1960s, U.S. Pacific Command estimated that China could have 435 nuclear weapons by 1973–that’s three times as many as China actually had. In 1984, the DIA set “the best estimate” for the projected number of Chinese nuclear warheads at 592 in 1989 and 818 in 1994–approximately 50 and 100 percent above actual force levels for those years. [19]

The fact is that China’s stockpile plateaued at approximately 400 warheads in the early 1980s.

These errors should be remembered when considering the latest predictions. Although it is possible that the number of warheads targeted primarily against the United States could increase “several-fold” between now and 2015, the overall size of the total Chinese stockpile will probably remain about where it is today.

Accurate predictions are difficult because of several unanswerable questions: Will China deploy more DF-31As than its currently deployed DF-5s (about 20)? Has China developed smaller and lighter warheads? Will China develop and deploy multiple reentry vehicles on its ICBMs? What countermeasures decisions might China take in response to a U.S. missile defense system? Only time will answer those questions accurately.

Just the concept that a Chinese General would use such inflamed rhetoric so close in time to the London bombings and a world-wide focus on terrorists extremists is disturbing. It could all be bluster, empty hostile words meant to “scare” Taiwan. With our nuclear attack submarines I’m sure that, if they ever attack us, we could pretty much lay total waste to all of deveopled China. But that would be way late in the game for yours truly, and everyone else living west of the rockies.

Laer is correct, there are two faces to China. One smiles, while the other sharpens its teeth!

Makes you wanna play Rodney King a little and whine, “Can’t we all just get along?” Thanks, Laer — I’ll get ya back! (db)

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 16th, 2005 at 12:11 pm and is filed under China - Awakening Dragon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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