Chinese General Who Threatened to Nuke U.S. Leads Delegation to DC
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A top general with the Communist dictatorship ruling mainland China, who became infamous in 2005 for threatening to use nuclear weapons to destroy hundreds of U.S. cities, is arriving in Washington, D.C., this week as part of a “military exchange program” between the Obama administration and the mass-murdering Chinese regime. The explosive revelations, first exposed Monday by the Washington Free Beacon, sparked an instant public outcry, with critics slamming the visit as everything from a national security threat to a slap in the face to the American people.

The controversial Communist general and chief of China’s National Defense University, Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu (pictured), will lead a military delegation from the regime in Beijing that includes 10 senior colonels from all branches of the dictatorship’s armed forces, according to U.S. officials cited in media reports. A spokesperson for the Department of Defense confirmed that the communist military officers would visit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., as well as undisclosed locations in Hawaii. 

“A military delegation from the U.S. Pacific Command will visit China later this year for a reciprocal exchange,” spokesperson Maj. Catherine Wilkinson with the Pentagon was quoted as saying by the Free Beacon. The Chinese regime’s officers, she added, would be visiting D.C. and Hawaii as part of a so-called “familiarization exchange” between the Obama administration and the ruthless dictatorship in Beijing. The real reason for the extremely controversial “exchange” remains unclear.

The leader of the Communist regime’s delegation, Maj. Gen. Zhu, became infamous worldwide after telling reporters in 2005 that the dictatorship in Beijing would deploy nuclear weapons against major American cities in the event of a conflict over Taiwan — a free nation that the barbarian Communist Party ruling mainland China considers a breakaway “province” to be conquered and enslaved at some point. The U.S. government has a defense treaty to protect Taiwan.

After Chairman Mao’s Communist regime seized power over mainland China with help from the Soviet Union and even subversive elements within the U.S. government and establishment, the nationalist Chinese government led by Chiang Kai-shek relocated to the island of Formosa. Today, it is known as Taiwan or the “Republic of China” — not to be confused with the so-called “People’s Republic of China” ruled by the increasingly fascist Communist Party of China.        

“If the Americans draw their missiles and position [sic]-guided ammunition onto the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,” Zhu was quoted as saying by the Financial Times and the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal in 2005. “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.”

At the time, Zhu’s threat to nuke hundreds of American cities — killing tens or possibly even hundreds of millions of innocent citizens — sparked fierce criticism from U.S. authorities and analysts. Former State Department spokesman Sean McCormack blasted the threat as “highly irresponsible,” saying he hoped that the remarks did not reflect the official policy of the Communist regime. “We have a broad and deep relationship in which we try to work closely with the Chinese government on a variety of issues, and I think that the remarks from that one individual are unfortunate,” the ex-spokesman said at the time.   

As the Free Beacon’s Bill Gertz noted, however, Zhu was not the first top Chinese military official to suggest that the dictatorship in Beijing would use nuclear weapons against the United States. In 1995, another senior general, Xiong Guangkai, implied that the regime would nuke Los Angeles if the U.S. government decided to defend Taiwan during a conflict, as it is treaty-bound to do.

While the threatened nuclear strikes were downplayed as mere personal remarks, experts have noted that no Chinese official would dare utter such comments without the backing of the regime’s Communist Central Military Commission. The Pentagon, meanwhile, noted in its annual report to Congress on China last year that there still “has been no clarification of the ambiguity” about the circumstances under which the regime would use first-strike nuclear weapons. Plus, neither general was disciplined — indeed, Zhu has since been promoted.

“Gen. Zhu’s propensity to threaten nuclear war against adversaries without regard for China’s supposed commitment to ‘no first use,’ his subsequent military promotions and his continued prolixity in China’s official communist party media should be a clear signal to American policy-makers that Chinese state policy is to use nuclear weapons as an instrument of intimidation,” former State Department official and China expert John Tkacik told the Free Beacon. Tkacik added that Zhu’s comments were undoubtedly authorized by the Central Military Commission, described as the “ultimate power organ” in Communist Party-run mainland China.

Of course, the official visit this week by the regime’s military brass — despite federal laws prohibiting any “exchange” with the Chinese communists that could help advance their military capabilities — is also not the first time an American president has invited China’s ruthless rulers to tour U.S. defense facilities. Bill Clinton, for example, as documented in The New American’s February 15, 1999, cover story “Chinagate: Treason in the White House,” helped the regime access some of the most sensitive American military technology while covering up various crimes for the dictatorship and its agents.

Apparently, Clinton’s collaboration was secured in exchange for massive, unlawful campaign contributions. U.S. military officials, however, were left deeply unsettled by the developments. “President Clinton promised to restrain those who ordered the Tiananmen Square massacre, but he has now allowed these men whose hands are stained with the blood of martyrs of freedom into the highest reaches of our military defenses, and made available to them significant portions of our advanced military technology,” wrote former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Thomas Moorer at the time.

The Communist regime ruling over mainland China, of course, holds the dubious distinction of being the single largest mass-murdering entity in all of human history, with estimates ranging from 60 million to as many as 100 million innocents killed — some through direct execution and torture, others through starvation, forced labor, or lack of medical care resulting from failed central planning. While the autocracy has been busy with public-relations gimmicks trying to improve its international image in recent decades, the dictatorship continues to be one of the most ruthless autocracies on the face of the planet.

Among its ongoing crimes are forced abortions and infanticide to enforce its barbaric “one-child policy;” slave-labor concentration camps to “re-educate” dissidents; brutal persecution of Christians and members of other faiths like Falun Gong practitioners; censorship of the Internet to conceal its crimes; harvesting organs from dissidents; and more. Internationally, the regime continues to employ what analysts say is the single largest espionage apparatus in the world to spy on critics, Western companies, governments, refugees who fled its oppression, and others.

However, some analysts say it should hardly be a surprise that the Obama administration is cozying up further to the brutal tyrants — if the dictatorship stopped loaning money to the U.S. Treasury, the federal government might well be forced into bankruptcy. Separately, Obama’s former Communications Director, Anita Dunn, publicly described Communist Chinese mass-murderer Mao Tse-tung (aka Mao Zedong) as one of her two favorite philosophers. In recent years, the regime’s leaders have received red-carpet treatment at the White House, too, with a pianist even playing communist propaganda song about killing U.S. troops during an official visit by tyrant Hu Jintao.

Consider also one of Obama’s primary benefactors: the Rothschild family-backed billionaire George Soros, who has bankrolled Obama and much of the “progressive” agenda in the United States and worldwide. As The New American reported in 2010, Soros publicly touted the barbaric Chinese regime as the future leader of what he called the “New World Order,” which the statist financier said should eventually have China’s dictatorship rather than the United States at the helm. Other top establishment figures have made similar suggestions.

It is also not the first time that the Obama administration has engaged in controversial “military exchange” programs with potential enemies of the United States. Just last year, for example, in an unprecedented step, the administration invited Russian airborne troops to America for the first-ever joint “terror” drills on U.S. soil, sparking widespread outrage and suspicion about what the president was plotting

“The Russian soldiers are here as invited guests of the U.S. government; this is part of a formal bilateral exchange program between the U.S. and Russia that seeks to develop transparency and promote defense reform,” Cmdr. Wendy L. Snyder, U.S. Defense Press Officer for policy, told The New American at the time. “Aside from typical military training, the exchange will include discussions on the rule of land warfare, developing appropriate rules of engagement, and employing cultural literacy and competency in the tactical environment.”

Why the Obama administration would invite a Communist Chinese delegation led by a general who threatened to nuke hundreds of American cities to the Pentagon and other sensitive facilities remains unclear. For critics of the president and his agenda, however, what is certain is that Obama and his machinations are a threat to national security that must be dealt with by Congress before any further damage is done to the United States. 

Image: Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu speaking at Emory University’s Halle Institute on Feb. 5, 2013. (Screen grab of YouTube video.)

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is currently based in Europe. He can be reached at [email protected].

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