"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition into the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, a dean at China's National Defense University, told visiting Hong Kong-based reporters. His remarks were reported by The Asian Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times.
Zhu stressed he was expressing a personal view, not official policy, and was confident that China and the United States would not go to war, the reports said. While Zhu is a serving officer, he isn't involved in policymaking.
Sure, General Zhu could be an idiot and the Chinese might never go to nuclear war over Taiwan.
Yet his assumptions are that US intervention would be met with nukes. Comments like this could delay American response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan enought to give the Chinese the window they need to capture Taiwan without our interference.
And his assumption is that Taiwan is internal Chinese territory. Again, a way of looking at things that lowers the nuclear threshold since an attack on one's homeland is touchy, one could say.
Of course, it could mean that he doesn't think that Chinese conventional forces could withstand American intervention. This is good. I agree that we would win if we intervene quickly enough. But I worry that the Chinese think they can get around our superiority with surprise, speed, and cleverness to exploit our weaknesses.
And then I go to the part where the general says he doesn't think there would be war between the US and China. He doesn't say no war to absorb Taiwan--just no war between the US and China. What if the Chinese have convinced themselves that the US would never intervene over Taiwan because we would never risk nuclear war as the Chinese think they would? Right there you have the magic ingredient that makes an invasion of Taiwan possible--the assumed unwillingness of the US to risk nuclear war over Taiwan.
General Zhu may or may not be speaking official policy, but the assumptions behind the statement seem very dangerous. The Taiwanese need to become a hard target that can hang on long enough to get our help and with enough strength and depth to need as little help from us as possible.
Strategic competitor, indeed.
