What To Do About Zhu?

Behind the cheap plastic toys, semi-sophisticated electronic goodies and inexpensive wardrobe additions, behind the impatient reassurances that there's nothing wrong with letting US energy assets fall into the hands of a Communist nation, is two countries.

One China is our increasingly capitalistic friend, promoted as more and more like us, a partner that is benefitting, as we are, from the increased economic partnership. Nice. But don't be so sure.

The other China is always there. It spoke up yesterday, and Bill Gertz at WashTimes caught it:

A senior general in the Chinese army threatened to use nuclear arms against the United States in a conflict over the Taiwan Strait, prompting the Bush administration to call the remarks "highly irresponsible."

"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition onto the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu said in yesterday's editions of the Financial Times and the Asian Wall Street Journal.

The comments were the most explicit statement of strategic intent by a Chinese military official since 1995, when another officer, Gen. Xiong Guangkai, implicitly threatened to use nuclear arms against Los Angeles if the United States intervened in a Taiwan conflict.

"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.

And because he does, the Unocal deal should be prohibited immediately. Then, we need to start talking earnestly with the Chinese leadership about what they're going to do about Zhu and his compatriots. If it's not enough, we need to shut down strategic trade with China and take back strategic manufacturing we've lost to them.