As a professor and the director over China's National Defense University Defense Strategic Institute and a general in the People's Liberation Army, Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu said at a briefing to foreign reporters that China would resort to nuclear force should the U.S. intercede in a Taiwan Straits conflict. He added that China was prepared to sacrifice the cities east of Xi'an (implying six major cities with 33 million people) and warned that the U.S. "will have to be prepared for hundreds of cities that will be destroyed."
In a letter addressed to Zhou Wenzhong, the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo criticized Zhu for making such comments. "For a senior government official to exhibit such tremendous stupidity by making such a brazen threat is hardly characteristic of a modern nation," the letter said.
Zhu subsequently claimed that he was merely expressing his personal views. However, his comments signaled a threat to the U.S., Taiwan, and above all, the Chinese people. If we look back in history, Zhu's comments are representative of the tyrant Mao Zedong.
One cannot help but wonder, why the CCP after all these years continues to walk in Mao's footsteps, failing to show any regard for human life. What could be more important than human life? If nuclear war breaks out, how many innocent lives in the U.S. and China would be lost?
Of course, history has shown us that the CCP is not afraid of sacrificing human lives. During the second session of the 8th National People's Congress in May 1958, Mao said that sacrificing lives in the event of a nuclear war, in exchange for eliminating capitalism, would not be such a bad thing after all.
Historically, under CCP rule, China's casualty rate during peacetime was comparable to that of wartime. During the Great Leap Forward, 30 million Chinese were starved to death, yet Mao showed no remorse. The deaths of millions as a result of the Cultural Revolution and many other political campaigns reflected Mao's inhumanity.
The use of tanks against its own people on June 4, 1989, was an unprecedented atrocity in the CCP's history, further revealing its flagrant disregard for human life. Deng Xiaoping once said: "Kill 200,000 in exchange for 20 years of stability."
Seen in this light, Zhu's views are not surprising. Those supporting the CCP's despotic rule would show no regard for the lives of their own people. Consider the coal mine disasters, the starvation of farmers that sacrificed their lives for the land, the flood in Heilongjiang, which took the lives of hundreds of elementary school children, the cover-up of the SARS crisis, and the death of college student, Sun Zhigang, due to police brutality.
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