Chinese General's Nuclear Lesson

Beijing hopes for new Kuomintang leader

The new leader of Taiwan's main opposition force, the Kuomintang Party, is 55-year-old Ma Ying-jeou. The Taipei mayor and former justice minister won 72.4% of the party's rank and file, leaving behind 64-year-old parliament speaker Wang Jinping.

Ma said he would prepare the Kuomintang to win the 2008 presidential election. A graduate of Harvard Law School, a charming favorite of Taiwanese women and a politician not involved in corruption scandals, he speaks excellent English and Chinese, but has little knowledge of the Taiwanese dialect. Local nationalists consider Ma an "outsider": he was born in Hong Kong, but his father is a native of China's Hunan province. The hostility of some Kuomintang members towards Ma Ying-jeou's Chinese roots could lead to a split in the party.

The Kuomintang opposes the attempts of the current rulers of the island to turn Taiwan into an independent state and supports the idea of ​​​​unifying China. As president, Ma Ying-jeou has a chance to improve relations with the mainland. In April, former Kuomintang Chairman Lian Zhan made a historic visit to Beijing, where he was received by the country's leader Hu Jintao. Yesterday, Hu congratulated Ma on his victory, expressing hope that “the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang will continue to develop cross-Strait relations.”

The cost of the conflict over Taiwan may be unaffordable for the entire world. It got to the point that recently, at a meeting with Hong Kong journalists, Chinese Major General Zhu Zhenhu, a professor at the National Defense University, admitted the possibility of a nuclear strike on the United States in the event of American military intervention in the conflict around the island. The general admitted that the Chinese army does not expect victory in a non-nuclear conflict with the United States and therefore “the weakest will use all possible means to protect themselves from a stronger enemy.” Zhu Zhenghu said that the Chinese are ready for “the destruction of all cities east of Xi’an” (the administrative center of the central province of Shaanxi), but the Americans will also have to prepare for “the destruction of hundreds of their cities.”

The threat of the destruction of "hundreds of cities" is a clear exaggeration - the Chinese have only 20 intercontinental missiles capable of reaching America. But the US State Department called the general’s words “extremely irresponsible” and demanded clarification. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Zhu Zhenghu had expressed his “personal opinion,” adding that Beijing would not tolerate Taiwanese independence.

Alexander LOMANOV